A new “European savings product”, and this “from 2024”: this is the proposal from the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire. It remains to agree on “the characteristics, the performance, with the voluntary States”… And the French PER model is an option on the table.
Surprise announcement! Bruno Le Maire proposed this Friday, February 23, the creation of a “European savings product” with the EU states that wish it, in order to mobilize private capital in the service of growth. “ Let’s launch a European savings product in 2024, the characteristics and performance of which we will define with the voluntary states. », declared Bruno Le Maire, before a meeting with his counterparts from the Twenty-Seven in Ghent, Belgium.
A new joint investment with all of Europe? No. With the voluntary countries: “It might be 2, 3, 4, 5 States… whatever. But as it is impossible to start immediately with 27, let’s start with a few,” said the French minister, without specifying whether any States would already volunteer to participate in such an approach. This proposal from Bruno Le Maire aims to direct European savings towards companies in the Old Continent: because a third of European savings remains in bank accounts, without being invested in the long term, Bercy recalls.
The PEPP? A failure. Hence the idea of a European PER
So, you probably don’t know it because its reputation is more than confidential but there already exists a European savings product: the PEPP, for Pan-European Personnel Pensions Product. Shortly after Bruno Le Maire’s declaration, his office in Bercy recalled in a message sent to the press the existence of the PEPP, “but its distribution faces several obstacles: in particular, its taxation and pricing (commissions) do not are not harmonized from one Member State to another.
A source close to the matter confirmed to the press that all the technical, marketing, tax and investment universe modalities are on the table and to be discussed between countries interested in the creation of this European savings product. “Several solutions are possible, such as the European PER for example, but to date nothing has been decided,” said the same source. Bercy refers to the discussions over the coming days and weeks between the Twenty-Seven.
“Europeans’ money is sleeping instead of working”
Bruno Le Maire estimated the savings of Europeans at some 35,000 billion euros, of which “more than 10,000 billion are sitting in bank accounts”. This money “must work for growth, innovation, research, for businesses and for employment,” he added.
“There is a lot of impatience among me (…). I am not coming to Ghent to meet my Finance Minister friends to have a chat,” said Bruno Le Maire in Belgium. “Europeans’ money is sleeping instead of working,” said the minister. “If we want European money to work instead of sleeping, the Capital Markets Union must be established without delay and there must be progress from 2024.”