Digitalisation gives crucial impetus for further advancing the Capital Markets Union project. Nearly half of all ongoing or planned regulatory projects addressing digitalisation have an impact on the capital market. In other words: it is hardly possible to regulate capital markets without accounting for digitalisation. This also means that simply making progress on the Capital Markets Union will not be enough – we need a digital Capital Markets Union.

Digitalisation enables us to process information and transactions more quickly. It also facilitates access to capital for companies and investors across Europe and increases transparency on financial markets. Digitalisation has the potential to reduce complexity.

We should not waste this potential with overambitious legislation. Yet, we are at risk of doing just that with the digital Capital Markets Union. Instead, we should reduce the complexity of the project. In my view, the strategy of addressing difficult questions with even more complex legislation is wrong. It can trigger unmanageable levels of complexity that impede innovation.

Europe must become a more attractive and secure business location for financial services providers. We will not succeed if we pursue regulation as an end in itself. We need simple and clear laws: rather than a regulatory straitjacket, rules should set principles pointing in the right direction. This generates certainty for all stakeholders and keeps bureaucracy to a minimum. Everyone knows that a decisive factor in business decisions – not least the question of where to set up shop – is the time required for bureaucratic processes in a given location. In Europe as a whole, but also in Germany, we need to gain speed in this regard.

We want to establish a market in which all players are able to access reliable information across borders with an appropriate level of regulation and supervision. If we succeed in doing so, we will create a European capital market that attracts capital flows from around the world – even in the digital age.