What is the capital markets union?
The capital markets union is a plan to allow money – investments and savings – to flow across the European Union. Consumers, investors and companies would benefit, regardless of their location.
Why is this important?
Europe needs to invest in strategic technologies and infrastructure. A single market for capital would help mobilise capital for these investments. Europe doesn’t lack capital, but we need to put the capital to work wherever it’s needed.
What’s the European Investment Bank Group’s role in the capital markets union?
The EIB Group is creating financial instruments that could be the building blocks of a real capital markets union. These instruments can take the abstract idea of capital markets union and turn it into tangible reality in the capital markets.
Watch how the EIB Group is deepening the Capital Markets Union, facilitating access to finance, removing investment barriers and encouraging venture capital investments.
Our four capital markets union building blocks
Expand the European Tech Champions Initiative
Launched through the European Investment Fund, our subsidiary for promoting small and medium-sized businesses, the European Tech Champions Initiative is an innovative fund-of-funds that uses public money to channel capital to large venture capital funds. The goal is to finance European scaleups with European capital, so that our innovators and entrepreneurs no longer have to sell their businesses to investors from the US, China or elsewhere, because of a lack of European investment.
Leverage our strong securitisation experience to launch a pan-European securitisation platform
Climate change requires massive investment, including in the areas of urban regeneration, energy efficiency, and building renovation. Securitisation, including green asset‑backed securities, could contribute to funding sustainable projects and create an attractive new asset for investors to aid the European Union’s green transition.
Paving the way for Europe’s digital capital markets
The EIB Group has pioneered the digital bond market since 2021 and supports wider digital finance innovation. It has issued digital bonds in multiple currencies, testing a range of solutions. The EIB Group continues to work closely with market participants and the European Central Bank (ECB) on digital finance, including digital bonds and the digital euro. We are also an active member of ECB’s Pontes working group – this contributes to development of the Eurosystem’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) solution, linking market platforms with TARGET Services for settlement in central bank money. This evolving contribution is helping to shape the future architecture of Europe’s capital markets, drawing on EIB’s market leadership and role as the financing arm of the European Union.
A global pioneer for sustainable bonds standards
The European Investment Bank’s contribution builds on its longstanding leadership in sustainable capital markets. The Bank issued the world’s first green bond in 2007 and has since issued Climate and Sustainability Awareness Bonds worth more than €130 billion in 23 currencies. This makes the European Investment Bank the world’s largest multilateral development bank issuer of use‑of‑proceeds green and sustainability bonds with external assurance.
Europe’s regulatory and supervisory framework for sustainable finance now includes the European Union Taxonomy, a unified and evolving classification of economic activities that support the European Union’s sustainability objectives. The framework has created a global benchmark for standardised and comparable information that helps investors make informed decisions, and it has encouraged similar initiatives around the world. The adoption of this benchmark, together with the reference role of the European Green Bond Standard, supports market integration, scalability, efficiency and fair competition, strengthening the Savings and Investment Union.
The Bank has followed a long‑standing strategy to align gradually with this European Union framework. This approach led to the Bank’s first bond issued under the European Green Bond Standard in 2025. The Bank continues to promote more integrated and scalable markets, including through its work with the European Union Platform on Sustainable Finance and the principles developed by the International Capital Market Association.