Savings and Investments Union and “EU Inc”: What Europe’s Capital Markets Agenda Means for Fintechs

European capital markets policy used to be a slow-moving field that fintechs could safely ignore. That has changed. Under the banner of the Savings and Investments Union, the Commission has launched a sequence of proposals that touch fintech business models directly — from who supervises crypto firms, to how tokenised securities scale, to a new EU-wide company form designed for startups.

The Savings and Investments Union (SIU) was launched with a Commission communication in March 2025. It rebrands and sharpens the older Capital Markets Union agenda around one diagnosis: Europe has high household savings but fragmented markets that fail to channel them into European companies. The response is a mix of recommendations, targeted legislation, and — for the first time in a serious way — proposals to centralise supervision.

The Building Blocks

• Retail investment: encouraging savings and investment accounts that give households simple, low-cost access to capital markets, plus work on supplementary pensions.
• Securitisation: a 2025 proposal to revive the market by lowering capital and due diligence burdens.
• Market integration and supervision: a December 2025 package proposing to move the supervision of significant market infrastructures — and of crypto-asset service providers — to ESMA.
• Tokenisation: a substantial expansion of the DLT Pilot Regime, including a much higher aggregate cap and a simplified regime for smaller DLT infrastructures.
• EU Inc: the “28th regime”, an optional EU-wide corporate form proposed in March 2026.

ESMA as Crypto Supervisor: The End of Licence Shopping?

The most consequential proposal for fintechs is the plan to transfer the authorisation and supervision of crypto-asset service providers under MiCA from national authorities to ESMA. Its logic is a reaction to the first MiCA years: national authorities applied the same regulation with visibly different rigour, and firms chose their home state accordingly. With a single European supervisor, that choice would lose most of its strategic value.

The proposal is still in the legislative process, and national resistance is significant — several member states defend their supervisory competence. For CASPs planning their licensing today, the prudent assumption is that the current national regime governs the next years, but that a supervisory model built on the most favourable interpretation will not survive a transition to ESMA.

Tokenisation Gets Room to Grow

The DLT Pilot Regime, which has applied since March 2023, was designed as a sandbox with narrow limits — and attracted few participants. The Commission now proposes to raise the aggregate cap to EUR 100 billion, remove asset-specific thresholds, and introduce a lighter regime for smaller DLT infrastructures. Together with the Eurosystem's work on settlement in central bank money, this signals that tokenised securities are meant to move from pilot to market infrastructure.

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The Savings and Investments Union is not one law. It is a direction — and for fintechs, the direction is fewer national niches and more European scale.

EU Inc: A Company Form for Scaling

In March 2026, the Commission proposed EU Inc, an optional corporate framework available alongside the 27 national company laws. The concept is digital by default: incorporation online within 48 hours, a registration cost capped at EUR 100, and no minimum capital. The aim is to let startups raise capital and operate across borders without restructuring for every market. Adoption by Parliament and Council is expected in 2026 or 2027; details such as the treatment of employee participation and tax will decide its practical value.

What Fintechs Should Plan For

1. 01CASPs: build supervisory relationships and compliance frameworks that would withstand review by a European supervisor, not only the current national one.
2. 02Wealth and investment fintechs: prepare for simplified retail investment products and accounts as a distribution channel — and for the competition they bring.
3. 03Tokenisation projects: re-evaluate the DLT Pilot Regime once the higher thresholds are adopted; it may become commercially viable for the first time.
4. 04Founders and investors: follow EU Inc — for cross-border scaleups, a single corporate form could simplify fundraising and expansion considerably.
5. 05Market entrants: treat “which home state?” as a question with a shrinking half-life; substance and quality will matter more than jurisdiction arbitrage.

Conclusion

The Savings and Investments Union shifts the ground on which fintech strategies in Europe are built: more centralised supervision, more room for tokenisation, and possibly a European company form. Firms that align early with this direction position themselves for scale rather than for niches. Aegiron Capital Group follows these developments and translates them into market entry strategies for companies; legal advice, including on licensing questions, comes from the law firm you engage.