The EU capital market ‘carrying on’ into the future?

This chapter considers how the future trajectory of EU capital market governance might fit against the scenarios set out in the Commission’s 2017 White Paper on the Future of Europe. It first identifies the significant difficulties in predicting the future shape of EU capital market governance, given the many uncertainties that attend its development and the incomplete nature of the EU’s current flagship project for capital markets, Capital Markets Union. It highlights regulation and supervision as the two main vectors across which capital market governance is likely to develop and identifies the rise of technocracy, in the form of the increasing influence of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), as the defining characteristic of the recent development of EU capital market governance. Given current political preferences, the importance of technocracy and the recent trajectory of EU capital market governance, it concludes that ‘carrying on’ is most likely to define future developments.