As part of the Next Generation EU, the Commission will propose by June 2024 new own resources, which could include an EU Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). Even though some of our concerns have been taken into account by narrowing the scope of the current proposal, it still is economically harmful and should be abandoned. The FTT proposal is incompatible with other political and regulatory objectives such as the Capital Markets Union, the encouragement of long-term investment and investment in equities. Given the potentially harmful effect of this measure, we have outlined some key recommendations for the Commission in the following paper.
Financial transaction tax (FTT)
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Harmonising electronic invoicing in the EU
The EU’s e-invoicing landscape is increasingly fragmented, with Member States imposing divergent formats, extra data fields, inconsistent definitions, validation rules and implementation timelines that drive up compliance costs – especially for SMEs – and undermine the Single Market.
Reforming the EU’s e-invoicing landscape is vital to deliver upon the vast simplification potential of VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) and the Public Procurement Directive revision.
Learn more about why the EU should establish a harmonised, interoperable EU framework for B2G and B2B e-invoicing by mandating the use of a common standard and limited variety of syntaxes, establishing common transmission methods and supporting efficient implementation.
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Aligning EU securitisation rules with global markets
The European Parliament’s November 2025 draft report on revitalising EU securitisation strengthens the Commission’s proposal by pushing further simplification, but it overlooks a central flaw in the framework: the misalignment between EU and non‑EU securitisations that continues to restrict EU investors’ access to global markets. Investor access should depend on whether sufficient information is available for due diligence, not on the use of a specific reporting template.
MEPs can make this fix by removing the template‑based verification requirement in Article 5(ii)(e) and anchoring investor due diligence in a clear, substance‑based ‘sufficient information’ standard. When combined with the Parliament’s encouraging simplification proposals, this targeted fix would lower operational costs, enable proportionate due diligence and strengthen market depth – all without weakening core safeguards.
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Revitalising EU securitisation
Mobilising private capital for long-term, productive investments is critical to advancing the EU’s green and digital transitions and realising the objectives of a Savings and Investments Union (SIU). However, the EU securitisation market has seen a significant decline since the global financial cri-sis and has since continued to lag behind comparable markets. Previous efforts to revive the EU secu-ritisation market, such as the introduction of the EU Securitisation Regulation and the Simple, Trans-parent and Standardised (STS) label for traditional securitisations have not meaningfully improved the situation.
Whilst not the panacea to all of Europe’s funding challenges, learn why revitalising securitisation in Europe will help unlock private finance and thereby create better conditions for the financing of the EU economy.
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