On 1 January 2025 Poland takes over the EU presidency –

Strategic debate on the role of national capital markets in the Capital Markets Union

From 1 January 2025, Poland will chair the Council of the European Union for six months. At its June 2024 meeting, the European Council reviewed progress and discussed additional steps to further integrate EU capital markets. The priority of reviving the Capital Markets Union (CMU) is to increase the financing capacity of the European economy in response to the critical challenges of today. The top-down vision for reviving the CMU should be accompanied by bottom-up solutions oriented toward the development of domestic capital markets that meet the needs of local economies. The Polish economy needs a strong domestic capital market to boost its innovation and productivity, as well as to finance the challenges of energy and digital transformation. Therefore, supporting the development of national capital markets must be one of the pillars of the Capital Markets Union setting the EU’s cohesion policy. The top-down development of the Capital Markets Union favors the most competitive markets and leads to a concentration of trading at the expense of smaller local markets, which equally need support for development in the interest of domestic businesses, economies and job quality.

The main thematic areas of the CMC’25

• Capital Markets Union and the role of national capital markets. Integration or local financial centers?
• Macroeconomic forecasts for Poland and the world and their impact on capital markets
• Financing energy transition and sustainable development
• Trends and policies in the area of digital finance
• Investors’ perspective: profile, needs, risk appetite
• The role of private equity and private debt in financing the economy
• Recent changes in banking, insurance and capital market regulations and their impact on the availability of capital for companies on the stock market
• How to increase the number and amount of IPOs (equity financing)?