Europe wants greater autonomy. It is investing in defence, reducing its energy dependencies and trying to build its own capabilities in artificial intelligence and critical technologies.
Yet one strategic dependency receives remarkably little attention: the financial system on which all of those ambitions depend. That blind spot has become increasingly difficult to justify.
Europe is one of the wealthiest regions in the world. Its households save trillions of euros. Its pension funds rank among the world’s largest investors. Yet Europe still relies heavily on financial infrastructure designed, owned or controlled elsewhere.
Europe generates enormous financial wealth but exercises surprisingly little control over how that money moves, where it is invested and through whose infrastructure it flows. Most people never notice it. You buy your morning coffee with Apple Pay. You order something online using Mastercard or Visa. You repay a friend through PayPal.
When a European start-up wants to scale, American venture capital often steps in. And when Europe's largest companies seek capital, many still choose Wall Street over European stock exchanges. It exposes citizens to structural vulnerabilities which deserve greater political attention.
Addressing this requires action on two fronts.
The first priority is completing the Capital Markets Union.
For more than a decade, policymakers have known what needs to be done. Yet national interests continue to block even the most obvious reforms. Europe still operates with fragmented capital markets, different supervisory practices and incompatible legal frameworks. Capital therefore struggles to move freely across borders, making financing more expensive and less accessible for European businesses.
The consequences are predictable. European entrepreneurs increasingly seek financing abroad, while European savings increasingly finance growth elsewhere.
The solutions are hardly revolutionary. Harmonise insolvency rules to give investors greater legal certainty. Move towards genuine European supervision, replacing today’s patchwork of 27 national approaches with one coherent rulebook.
Make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to raise capital on public markets, reducing Europe’s excessive reliance on bank financing. And improve financial literacy so that more Europeans become investors rather than merely savers.
The second priority is regaining control over Europe’s financial infrastructure.
Many of the essential building blocks of the financial system remain outside European control. Payment networks, credit rating agencies, cloud providers and market data services are often headquartered abroad or subject to foreign geopolitical interests. However, steps in the right direction are being taken.
The digital euro will provide a trusted European public payment option, while Wero - a new European payment solution to offer an alternative to international card networks such as Visa and Mastercard - can strengthen Europe’s private payment infrastructure.
But we need to go further. For example, Europe should continue to expand payment systems such as SEPA and TARGET, create better conditions for European fintech companies to grow and reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens that weaken its own financial institutions while strengthening foreign competitors. These are reforms Europe can implement itself, without waiting for anyone else's permission.
Europe has made competitiveness, defence, energy security and artificial intelligence central to its economic agenda. Financial autonomy belongs in that same agenda. Ensuring that European capital finances European growth through resilient European financial infrastructure is one of the most important economic choices the Union now faces.
