On 5 December 2019, the Council of the EU (Council) published a note outlining the conclusions it has adopted on the deepening of the Capital Markets Union (CMU), which it reached at its 3736^th meeting.

The Council recognises that the EU capital markets are not yet fully integrated and further efforts are needed to deepen the CMU. Accordingly, the Council sets out the following principles that should underpin the deepening of the CMU:

• access to finance for European Companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises;
• the identification and removal of barriers to increasing cross-border capital flows;
• the creation of incentives to enable well informed retail investors to invest in capital markets, in particular long-term investments;
• the active support of the transition to sustainable economies;
• the embrace of technological process and digitalisation; and
• the strengthening of the global competitiveness of EU capital markets.

Additionally, the Council specifically invites the European Commission to:

• come forward with a set of clearly defined, objective, targeted, effective and adequate key performance indicators by the end of 2020, inform member states of those indicators and report on the progress of the CMU regularly and comprehensively on the basis of those key performance indicators;
• assess and explore measures on steps the Commission and member states can take to further the above principles (as set out in the Annex to the note) and identify potential gaps for these further measures as well as take into account measures already adopted in its future work on the CMU; and
• consult closely with member states and relevant stakeholders before taking any measures, to report every year (based on key performance indicators) on the progress made in deepening the CMU and facilitate discussion on CMU topics, notably where member states are called upon to take action.