On 6 May 2026, BETTER FINANCE held an international conference with high-level speakers from public, private, and civil society sectors to discuss market integration in Europe. The message from the opening session was direct. Despite years of reform, European markets remain fragmented, costly, and difficult for ordinary investors to navigate. Data is hard to access and compare, cross-border investment remains limited, and retail participation in capital markets is still low.
BETTER FINANCE Managing Director Aleksandra Mączyńska framed the day’s central question: does market integration actually improve outcomes for retail investors?
Integration, she stressed, is not an end in itself. It must be measured by whether it improves investor outcomes and builds trust. She introduced two themes that would drive the discussion: the EU Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP) and the rise of private markets.
Brussels Has a Plan. Now Comes the Hard Part.
Tatyana Panova, Head of the Securities Markets Unit at DG FISMA, argued that geopolitical tensions have made building scale at home a strategic necessity. Past reforms tackled fragmentation at the margins. However, she pointed out that MISP goes a step further, covering the full value chain of capital markets. Fewer frictions, she said, should mean lower broker fees, tighter spreads, and more competitive order pricing for retail investors.
She also pointed to complementary non-legislative measures: a blueprint for savings and investment accounts, a recommendation on pension auto-enrolment, and a new financial literacy strategy. Her closing message was unambiguous: Member States and Parliament must seize the moment. “Europe may not have another chance soon enough to implement such a wide-ranging reform,” Panova added.
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Better Data, Cheaper Trades, More Competition, But Only If the Details Hold
Moderated by Nicolas Véron, Senior Fellow at Bruegel and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the first panel examined whether the MISP will deliver tangible benefits for retail investors.
Eglantine Desautel, CEO of EuroCTP, explained that for the first time Europe will have a single, regulated source of trading data, aggregating prices and volumes from around 80 venues for equities and ETFs, with a planned launch in July 2026. Retail investors stand to gain access to the same market data as professionals and, crucially, the ability to verify the quality of execution they receive. She acknowledged the demand from users for attribution in some best execution contexts, while noting that the CTP already covers many use cases in its current form. She also noted that the need for any future evolution will be easier to assess after the CTP launches.
Henrik Husman of Nasdaq Helsinki pointed to the Nordic markets as proof of concept. Retail investors account for close to 20% of equity trading in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark which is the result of decades of political consensus, simplified tax treatment, and a culture where investing is normalised. The lesson for Europe, he suggested, is that regulation and financial incentives matter, but so does culture.
Evert van Walsum of ESMA welcomed the package’s direction, highlighting revised Key Information Documents, new distribution cost reporting, and enhanced issuer transparency as concrete gains for investors. He stressed that any expansion of ESMA’s supervisory role must be matched by governance reforms that make centralised oversight genuinely effective.
Martin Molko of BETTER FINANCE identified gaps: stronger investor redress mechanisms and greater retail investor voice in ESMA’s advisory structures remain missing from the package. Speakers from the floor echoed a broader point: that the presence of national political will is as important as EU legislation in translating ambition into outcomes.
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Europe Is Losing Its Listed Companies. Retail Investors Are Paying the Price.
Moderated by BETTER FINANCE Vice-President Jella Benner-Heinacher, the second panel examined a quieter but consequential trend of the shrinking of Europe’s listed companies.
Benner-Heinacher opened with findings from a joint BETTER FINANCE and DSW study on delisting covering 12 European jurisdictions. Between 2010 and 2022, the EU lost roughly 15% of its listed companies, falling from around 7,400 to 6,300. In 2023 alone, 110 delistings removed approximately €467 billion in market capitalisation. Contrary to common perception, the main driver is not relocation to the US. Over 1,000 take-private transactions were recorded in recent years, against just around 130 companies that moved their primary listing to the United States. Every delisting shrinks the investable universe for retail savers and removes companies from the disclosure and supervisory frameworks designed to protect them.
Delphine de Chaisemartin of AFG noted the trend is global, driven by concentration in large-cap stocks, declining small-cap liquidity, and the rise of passive strategies. In 2025, 70% of net inflows in Europe went into large-cap ETFs. She noted that this is a dynamic that pushes smaller companies further from public markets. Private markets, she argued, should complement public ones rather than replacing them.
Olivier Fines of CFA Institute cautioned that the decline predates MiFID and reflects deeper structural shifts. Engineering capital flows through policy incentives risks distorting markets; improving access, transparency, and investor education is the more principled response.
Jakub Michalik of Euronext pushed back on pessimism, pointing to 158 new admissions across 2024 and 2025. Full implementation of the EU Listing Act and harmonised prospectus thresholds, he argued, can make public listing attractive again.
Guillaume Prache of BETTER FINANCE closed with a warning: retail-facing private equity products have historically underdelivered relative to professional-investor equivalents, as they usually come with higher fees, limited liquidity, and opaque valuations. Reviving public markets must remain the priority.
The Commissioner’s Message: Build Trust First, Markets Will Follow
European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque delivered a keynote that grounded the technical debates of the afternoon in a broader vision. Europe, she observed, does not lack savings, it lacks the tools and culture to mobilise them productively. The Savings and Investments Union (SIU) is designed to address exactly that.
She outlined four pillars: citizens and savings, investment and financing, integration and scale, and efficient supervision, with citizens as the foundation on which all others depend. Without retail trust and participation, no market reform can succeed.
She emphasised that the SIU is about making it easier for citizens to deploy their savings as they choose. Financial literacy, simplified savings and investment accounts with tax incentives, auto-enrolment in supplementary pensions, and a reformed Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP) are the consumer-facing tools. The MISP provides the market architecture for deeper, more integrated, and better-supervised capital markets that deliver more choice, more competition, and lower costs.
She was direct about the urgency. “What we have on the table on MISP is incredibly ambitious,” she said, noting that political negotiations with ministers had confirmed the scale of the challenge. She called on co-legislators to share the ambition and the tight calendar, framing swift agreement as a commitment made at the highest institutional level.
The Direction Is Right. The Test Is Delivery.
BETTER FINANCE Managing Director Aleksandra Mączyńska closed the conference by echoing the Commissioner’s call for matched ambition at the national level. She welcomed Poland’s announcement of a new savings and investment account modelled on the Swedish system, set to become operational in January 2027. It is an early sign that Commission recommendations can translate into national action.
The conference made clear that the direction of travel is right. The MISP, the Listing Act, the Retail Investment Strategy, and the financial literacy agenda each address real barriers to retail investor participation. But legislation alone is insufficient. Consistent implementation, supervisory convergence, genuine competition among providers, and meaningful investor protection are what will determine whether Europe’s capital markets ultimately deliver for the citizens whose savings they depend upon.
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