European regulation slows investment on the continent and causes much of the savings generated in the region to flee to the United States. “Regulation and European fragmentation reduce market agility,” said Tomás Muniesa, president of Caixabank, during his speech at the Cercle d’Economia Meeting, held this week in Barcelona.
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In the same vein, Muniesa lamented the lack of agility in implementing changes: “two years have passed since the publication of the Draghi report and nothing or very little has been done. Surely in five years we will have laid the foundations and in ten we will have started doing something. In a company, this would be unthinkable. We run the risk of falling into inaction,” he concluded. Along the same lines, Muniesa recalled the maxim: “The United States innovates, China produces, and Europe regulates.”
During the intervention, David López Salido, director general of Economics at the Bank of Spain, also participated, noting that Europe’s problem lies more in the fragmentation of regulations among different states than in the regulation itself.
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In this regard, they advocated for banking union and the need to gain scale in the financial world by promoting large investment funds and more resources for pension funds. In any case, Muniesa wanted to make it clear that European companies – 95% of which are SMEs – do not have a problem accessing capital on the continent.
