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European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Speech by Commissioner Albuquerque (by video message) for the EIF Financial Institutions Shareholder Group Annual Meeting Online, 9 October 2026 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start by thanking our hosts Marjut, José, and Manuel for inviting me to join you today. It's rare to have so many institutions with such a central role in Europe's investment eco...
European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Speech by Commissioner Albuquerque (by video message) for the EIF Financial Institutions Shareholder Group Annual Meeting Online, 9 October 2026 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start by thanking our hosts Marjut, José, and Manuel for inviting me to join you today. It's rare to have so many institutions with such a central role in Europe's investment ecosystem gathered in one room. Diary constraints mean I am joining you from Brussels today instead of Madrid, but I was determined to take part in your discussions in some format. Many, if not all, of you in the room will be aware of our Savings and Investments Union strategy to better integrate Europe's fragmented capital and banking markets, and to supercharge the investment ecosystem in the EU. This strategy is highly relevant for every institution represented here today. Both public and private institutions encounter barriers that make it harder to operate across borders, mobilise investment and achieve genuine European scale. Both sides are already playing key roles to mobilise capital throughout the Union. Today's hosts, for their part, serve as critical bridges between public policy goals and private sector's assistance in implementing those objectives. Guarantees and co-investments crowd in private institutional capital to mitigate risk and support innovative market segments. The financial groups among you are then pivotal implementation partners for our vision of a more connected, and more competitive, European financing ecosystem. Your role will be to back the best ideas in the EU, wherever they may be, turning our shared vision into reality. Ladies and gentlemen, when you strip the Savings and Investments Union back to its core elements, you will find a system designed to ensure that promising ideas and companies across the Union can access the financing they need at every stage and reach true scale here in Europe. This will be one of the central tests of our strategy's success. Yet the reality today - and this audience will understand it better than most - is that Europe faces a persistent funding gap between innovation and commercial scale, particularly in later-stage venture and growth financing. The EIB and EIF play a front-line role here by providing targeted risk-absorption instruments that give private investors the confidence to back early-stage, deep-tech pioneers. We are working to build a deep, continent-wide VC market capable of writing larger tickets, allowing successful start-ups to grow into global market leaders at home. This is about creating scale. With our upcoming venture capital reform, we intend to remove regulatory frictions, enabling VC funds to aggregate capital from multiple member states efficiently. A stronger scale-up ecosystem requires encouraging pension funds, insurers, and asset managers to allocate a higher percentage of their portfolios to growth-stage equity. We recognise that our frameworks have not always done enough to support such investment at scale. To remedy this, the Commission has advanced targeted prudential measures designed to unlock institutional capital for long-term equity and venture investments. This includes the modifications of the Solvency II delegated act for insurance companies, as well as our measures on legislative programmes which allow banks and insurers to benefit from lower capital requirements when investing alongside public entities, such as EIB or national promotional banks. For financial institutions and shareholder groups, this shift represents a prime opportunity to diversify into high-yield technology assets while directly contributing to strategic European autonomy. We need a joint effort to ensure that Europe's most promising scale-ups have uninterrupted financial lifelines from seed stage through to IPO, securing the continent's long-term economic resilience. Reviving the securitisation market in the EU can bring tangible benefits to our financing ecosystem. A well-functioning securitisation system can free up bank balance sheets and support more financing for households and businesses across Europe, while offering more opportunities for institutional investors. It is also an area where the Commission and the EIB Group are closely aligned. The EIB Group is already showing what this instrument can achieve in practice. In 2025, backed by EIB and private resources, the EIF invested more than 6 billion euro in securitisation transactions across Europe for the first time - a 40 percent increase on the previous year. These transactions show what securitisation can deliver for the SIU, and our proposals aim to build on this progress by making the EU framework more practical for banks as originators, and more attractive for investors. As we finalise the review of the securitisation framework, that objective – a well-functioning securitisation market - must remain firmly in sight. The co-legislators are working hard towards reaching a political agreement before the end of the year. This means a simpler and more proportionate regime, while maintaining strong safeguards. This should allow the market to grow in a healthy manner and the EIB Group and its financial partners to deploy financing more effectively and at greater scale. In closing, let me once again thank our hosts for organising today's event and for inviting me to participate. My team in DG FISMA works closely with colleagues across the EIB and EIF, and we greatly value the partnership between our institutions. We share the same ambition for a stronger and more integrated European investment ecosystem. Continued cooperation between the Commission, the EIB Group and financial institutions across Europe will be essential to turning that ambition into delivery. This is fundamental for connecting European savings with productive investment, mobilising private capital, and for financing Europe's innovation and scale-up ecosystem . We all have a part to play in delivering a successful SIU, and I challenge you to think about your specific role during today's discussions. I wish you a productive day ahead. Thank you. SPEECH/26/2052 <@rel_link@> Related media Message by Maria Albuquerque on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the Financial Institutions Shareholder Group of the EIF
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