Sweden's Riksbank published a speech by Governor Erik Thedéen setting out lessons from Sweden for the European Union’s Savings and Investment Union (SIU) debate. He supported the SIU concept but argued it should prioritise market-led integration, including greater interoperability between existing exchanges and the development of regional financial centres, while avoiding the politicisation and micro-management of savings and investment instruments. Thedéen also addressed supervision in a more integrated market, calling for more uniform implementation of key EU rules such as the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) while questioning the value of fully centralised supervision, except where activity is effectively concentrated in a small number of centres such as fund management. To illustrate how policy design can broaden retail participation without constraining investment choices, he highlighted Sweden’s investment savings account (ISK), used by around 40 per cent of Swedes, where tax is levied on imputed income based on the value of holdings and a standard return rate set at the long-term government bond rate plus 1 percentage point, and where a tax exemption applies to income on the first approximately EUR 15,000 of investments, with the threshold set to double next year. He cited limited progress from earlier top-down EU initiatives, including the Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP), which he said had a take-up of about 0.002 per cent after three years, and pointed to fragmented insolvency regimes as a barrier to cross-border investment, floating the idea of an optional EU “28th regime” with Chapter 11-style features. The remarks were framed against the European Commission’s renewed SIU work, including its consultation on barriers in trading and post-trading, asset management and supervision, and he referenced exploratory approaches such as voluntary “competitiveness laboratories” and recent work by a group of countries on requirements for a European savings product label.

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