Germany’s Merz Calls for Unified EU Stock Market to Stop Listings Fleeing to New York
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has revived an idea that’s been floating around Brussels for years: building a single, pan-European stock platform. The goal, he told lawmakers this week, is simple enough—stop Europe’s high-growth firms from heading to Wall Street.
“Successful companies such as biotech firms from Germany should not have to list on the New York Stock platform,” Merz told the Bundestag on Thursday. “They need broad and deep European capital markets so they can finance themselves better and quicker.”
His comments land at a moment when EU policymakers are struggling to make the Capital Markets Union more than a slogan. Europe’s stock markets remain splintered across dozens of platforms and trading systems, and the bloc’s beginups often find deeper liquidity and investor appetite across the Atlantic.
A familiar message, but with new urgency
Merz’s call drew immediate applause from Euronext, which already operates bourses in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Milan, Lisbon, Dublin and Oslo. Chief Executive Stéphane Boujnah said in a statement that the company “welcomes Chancellor Merz’s call for deeper and more attractive European capital markets,” adding that Euronext “is ready to contribute to the next level of consolidation.”
That consolidation is already underway. Earlier this month, Euronext launched an offer to acquire all shares of the Athens Stock platform (ATHEX), extending its footprint into southern Europe. If completed, the deal would bring Greece under the identical umbrella as the rest of the Euronext network, creating a shared infrastructure for listings and clearing.
The company’s “federal model” allows national markets to keep their identity while using common technology and rulebooks. Boujnah has long argued this approach could serve as the foundation for a broader European platform—one that merges liquidity while avoiding political battles over control.
Why fragmentation is a difficulty
Since the EU’s MiFID directive in 2007 opened markets to competition, trading has exploded across hundreds of venues. Today, more than 500 trading platforms operate in the EU, from national platforms to private “dark pools” run by banks and brokers.
The result is a patchwork of rules, fees, and systems that make it harder for investors to view prices and for smaller companies to raise money. Roughly a third of European share trading now happens off-platform, according to industry data.
While competition brought innovation, it also drained liquidity from national bourses and fragileened Europe’s visibility on the global stage. “One deep pool of liquidity, lower trading costs, and stronger global visibility for European companies—that’s the potential,” said Sylvain Thieullent, chief executive of Horizon Trading answers. “But harmonising rulebooks and infrastructures would take time and close collaboration.”
The politics behind the idea
Merz’s proposal puts Berlin closer to Paris in the long-running debate over financial integration. France has typically backed stronger EU-level supervision, while Germany has been cautious about handing power to Brussels. But the Draghi report on EU competitiveness earlier this year gave the idea new political weight, warning that Europe needs unified capital markets to finance its transition to green and digital industries.
Still, the road to one platform is steep. Europe’s antitrust watchdogs blocked the 2017 merger of Deutsche Börse and the London Stock platform, arguing it would have created a monopoly in clearing services. Regulators would likely take a hard look at any future attempt to create a single operator.
Even if politics align, the plumbing of Europe’s markets remains tangled: clearinghouses, central securities depositories, data vendors, and national regulators all operate under diverse rules.
Few expect one “European Stock platform” to appear overnight. More likely is a federal structure, where groups like Euronext continue stitching together regional markets under common systems.
A key milestone could be the consolidated tape—a long-awaited EU project to provide real-time price data across venues. That initiative, alongside the gradual alignment of listing and insolvency rules, could be the stepping stones to the deeper liquidity Merz envisions.
