Capital markets integration has been a top priority of EU financial regulation over the last decades. More recently, the project for the creation of a Capital Markets Union (CMU) has guided the main policy initiatives in EU financial law, leading to the adoption of a broad set of integration measures that are unrivalled in the rest of the world. 

The importance of a pan-European, fully integrated capital market for sustained economic growth, job creation and improved economic resilience has long been acknowledged by EU policymakers. This has been emphasized recently in the 2024 Draghi and Letta reports (“The future of European competitiveness” and “Much more than a Market”), as well as in the most recent policy initiatives of the EU Commission, such as the 2025 Competitiveness Compass. The renewed commitment towards the creation of unified capital markets aims to strengthen the sectoral and still limited CMU with a stronger Savings and Investments Union (SIU), as envisaged by the EU Commission in its latest Communication on the matter.     

However, the obstacles that still prevent a seamless circulation of capitals and financial services across the borders have proven particularly intractable, so that national barriers persist, fragmenting the internal market into many national European markets. Despite decades of efforts toward greater regulatory harmonization and supervisory convergence, market participants are often subject to inconsistent rules and interpretations. This prevents a true level playing field among competitors based in different countries and increases the cost of cross-border investment and financial services.

The project

The reasons why full market integration is still a chimera are manifold. They range from weak harmonisation strategies to divergent supervisory approaches, and from the influence of national private law regimes to poorly devised conflict-of-law rules.

The DelCMU project addresses the convergence of regulation and enforcement as a precondition for creating integrated capital markets within the European Union. The project examines the most significant differences between national regulatory systems that continue to hinder the CMU initiative. It is based on the observation that, although regulatory harmonization in traditional financial law can still progress, greater attention needs to be given to the interpretation and application of the rules. In particular, the role of data and its circulation in these contexts requires closer scrutiny.

Against this backdrop, the project explores how the creation of data spaces can support the development of the single market that the CMU aims to achieve. This applies both in terms of the rules within the CMU that define a regulatory framework for the circulation and accessibility of data, and the interactions between supervised entities, supervisors, and judicial bodies.

The project addresses these issues from an innovative perspective, focusing on the role and the regulation of data as a crucial – but often neglected – building block of a well-functioning CMU and, in the future, SIU. In particular, the project focuses on the establishment of efficient data spaces as instruments to foster the further integration of EU capital markets and, ultimately, to achieve the objective of a single pan-European capital market. In this context, data spaces are understood as structured information ecosystems where various stakeholders, such as financial institutions, regulators, companies and service providers can share and use data in a secure, interoperable, and compliant manner. After providing a targeted analysis of the most salient differences among national regulatory and enforcement systems that still hinder the CMU-SIU project, the project explores how the creation of suitable data spaces can support market integration. It does so from two main perspectives – one focussing on regulation, and the other on enforcement.

From a regulatory point of view, the project illustrates how data are at the heart of the most recent developments in the CMU and SIU and how this will affect the activities of listed companies, investment service providers, trading venues and, ultimately, investors. However, the project also shows that while some progresses towards integration can still be made through traditional regulatory measures aimed at harmonizing national legal systems, policymakers should focus more on enhanced coordination among national supervisors and between public and private actors involved in enforcement. This, in turn, requires proper regulation of data. Even in the new context of data-driven integration, diverging national interpretations of common EU rules will continue to hinder cross-border transactions unless data and their governance support a better management of these persisting divergencies.

Expected outcomes

• Offering a comprehensive analysis on the role of data and data governance in the CMU and SIU projects.

• Evaluating diverse regulatory strategies concerning data and data governance in relation to their ability to facilitate European capital markets integration.

• Identifying potential areas for improvement in current and proposed regulatory strategies regarding the use of data in providing financial services and supervising capital markets.

• Raising awareness of the persisting obstacles toward the integration of Europea capital markets and the strategies that can overcome them.

Research Units

The project is jointly run by the University of Genova, Department of Law (with a coordinating role) and the University of Bologna, Department of Law.

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