The European Commission will present, in the first quarter of 2027, a "comprehensive legislative package" to strengthen the competitiveness of the European banking sector and combat market fragmentation. The announcement was made by European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque, responsible for Financial Services and the Savings and Investment Union, before MEPs from the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, in Brussels.
The future package will be based on a report on the competitiveness of the banking sector and the single banking market, presented in July, which identified three major challenges: market fragmentation, the need to apply international standards more appropriately to the specificities of the European economy, and the growing complexity of the prudential framework. Maria Luís Albuquerque warned that "partial measures or measures that do not address structural issues" would not work, causing the EU to fail to make progress in the face of "fragmented markets, insufficient financing and increasingly weak and anemic growth."
The commissioner pointed out that cross-border banking activity in the EU remains limited and defended the need to strengthen the single market and complete the Banking Union, including through the creation of a third pillar for deposit insurance. Brussels also wants to adapt the application of international standards to the specificities of the EU economy, maintaining a level playing field, and simplify the prudential framework with more proportionate rules for smaller and lower-risk banks. Maria Luís Albuquerque recognized that EU banks are more resilient, better capitalized, and more profitable than before 2008, but stressed that "resilience alone is not sufficient" to guarantee competitiveness.
The announcement is part of the broader strategy of the Savings and Investment Union, which the Commission intends to use to mobilize European savings and channel them into productive investment. Negotiations are underway on the capital markets integration and supervision package, supplementary pensions, and securitization, processes on which Maria Luís Albuquerque considered that "progress must now be commensurate with that ambition."
