Presented by the European Commission as the solution to finance EU priorities, the Savings and Investment Union (SIU) gathers a large range of measures and strategies to push EU citizens to massively invest in the EU financial market. Yet, the initiative fails to include any guardrails to channel additional investments toward these goals and not toward activities that are at odds with them. In fact, it is likely to mainly benefit large asset managers – including prominent US managers like Blackrock and Vanguard – that have some of the most climate harmful practices in the market.
In the end of 2025, the Brussels bubble is bustling with noise of the Saving and Investment Union (SIU). Formerly dubbed the “Capital Market Union” (CMU), the SIU’s pitch is simple: deepening and unifying EU financial markets to bridge the gap between household savings and productive investments. According to the European Commission, this is crucial to bring more funding toward small and medium companies (SMEs), innovation, climate transition projects, and strategic EU goals that face an estimated €750–800 billion annual financing gap by 2030 (1).
Key elements of the SIU include harmonized market supervision (via the ESMA), streamlined regulation, a push for the development of pan European financial products and pensions and savings and investment accounts, a revival of securitization, new digital infrastructure (like a shared ledger), a strategy for financial literacy…
While covering a wide range of issues, all these measures aim at driving EU citizens to increasingly invest their savings in financial markets. One could legitimately question that choice, but even without going there, it is doubtful the currently proposed SIU can deliver on its alleged objectives. On the contrary, it will likely fail to contribute to EU priorities and end up feeding the climate crisis.
No SIU mechanisms to fund “EU priorities” and the ecological transition
Promoters of the SIU underline that the EU cannot reach its goals without a massive mobilization of private finance and that the proposed reform is needed for this to happen. Yet, the whole SIU package does not include any measure to channel funds toward EU priorities (2). Furthermore, most of the proposed changes would contribute to funding EU and non-EU companies, without any geographical distinction. Therefore, if the SIU will likely contribute to finance some activities related to EU priorities, it will also finance activities that are not aligned with them.
When it comes to climate change mitigation, the SIU’s impact will extend to all sectors and companies, including those with the highest carbon footprints. For example:
- The promotion of securitization – a method used to bundle illiquid securities, sell them and/or transfer the associated risks on the financial market – could help banks increase their lending capacity and reduce risk exposure. However, this increased capacity could facilitate lending to heavily polluting activities, and the process could partly hide the risks stemming from financing high emitting activities. (3)
- The strategies published to “boost financial literacy and investment opportunities for citizens” aim at facilitating investment from citizens through deeper knowledge and more accessible savings and investment accounts (SIAs). The documents barely mention climate and sustainability (4) and include no recommendations whatsoever to better integrate them.
The SIU as a gift to large asset managers, at the expense of climate
The EU fund industry stands to benefit the most from the SIU proposal. This industry is highly concentrated, with the top 5 asset management companies making up 86% of the market in Italy, 84% in Denmark, 63% in Spain or 54% in Germany (5).
Furthermore, US based Blackrock and Vanguard have a major role in the sector and dwarf their European counterparts globally: they respectively have $ 11.5 trillion and $ 10 trillion of asset under management, compared to EUR 2.3 trillion for the largest EU asset manager Amundi. With financially attractive funds and low management cost, US asset managers and funds are likely to capture the new business generated by the SIU. The growing influence of non-EU asset managers already resulted in UCITS funds integrating less EU company shares – from 52% in 2008 to 32% in 2023 – and buying more US shares – from 19% to 48% (6). EU investment funds will therefore contribute less to the value of EU companies and more to US companies.
In this context, the SIU could not only fail to support the EU economy but could also have major negative impacts on climate and the environment. Indeed, the large asset managers that stand to benefit the most from the reforms are also the ones that have the worst impact on climate and the environment. An analysis of the climate practices of 30 major European and US asset managers published in December 2025 (7) reveals that:
- They collectively hold at least $16.9 billion in 157 bonds issued by the largest fossil fuel developers between the 1st of January 2024 and the 30th of June 2025, with most managers showing a sharp increase in their investments held in recent oil and gas bonds. Vanguard and BlackRock are the two largest fossil fuel investors, with $4.2 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. Only 2 out of 30 have committed to stopping most of their new bond investments in oil and gas producers.
- They vote in favor of 81% of director re-elections and board discharges and 69% of remuneration-related resolutions of fossil fuel companies. Here again, US managers stand out with overwhelming support to companies and their strategies. Only one asset manager has made a strong commitment to penalize these companies, even though it continues to hold significant investments in them.
If the SIU is to contribute to EU priorities, these priorities must be systematically embedded inside related proposals. This notably means ensuring that additional investment and freed-up capital is channeled toward sustainable activities, and that financial flows to unsustainable ones are progressively starved. Without such a change, the SIU initiative will turn the savings of Europeans into fuel for the climate crisis, inside and outside of the Union.
