📋 Tender Overview
TCRS: 24304
Status: TC Com approved
Location: Regional
Industry Sector: Financial Institutions
Notice Type: State
PSD Disclosed: 17 Sep 2026
Project Description
Rationale
Capital markets in Central and South-Eastern Europe (CSEE) remain significantly underdeveloped, facing a range of structural challenges that hinder their growth and interconnectedness into the broader European financial ecosystem. The equity market capitalisation-to-GDP ratio varies widely across the region—from just 1.5% in Slovakia to 30% in Croatia—yet the average across seven countries, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (the Participating Countries), remains below 15% in stark contrast to the EU average of 68%. Notably, this ratio exceeded 21% in 2010[RA1.1], signalling a persistent erosion of market relevance over the past decade. Several factors contribute to this stagnation: a limited number of IPOs, low market liquidity, a narrow selection of financial instruments, and underdeveloped digital infrastructure. These issues collectively reduce the attractiveness of CSEE markets to both domestic and international investors. The absence of a coherent, integrated regional capital market framework further limits the ability to pool liquidity and attract large-scale institutional investment. Consequently, businesses—especially SMEs and start-ups—struggle to access non-bank financing, while domestic savings remain underutilised, further limiting the pool of capital available for productive investment.
Addressing these challenges requires a coordinated and comprehensive approach aimed at improving market efficiency, accessibility, and investor confidence. Strengthening capital markets in the region is essential not only for fostering economic growth but also for enhancing competitiveness and interconnectedness within the wider European financial system. Market participants and supervisory authorities across the region have expressed strong interest in coordinated regulatory reform to remove cross-border barriers, improve investor access, and strengthen the overall market ecosystem.
A key challenge facing the Participating Countries is their limited scale, compounded by fragmentation across jurisdictions. The small size of local ecosystems—each with distinct market structures and practices—reduces accessibility for both regional and international investors. Despite the application of the common EU regulatory framework the different regulatory and supervisory approaches and practises and disconnected capital market infrastructures limit cross-border activities and present significant barriers to developing deeper, more integrated markets in CSEE. These countries, characterized by relatively small and open economies with limited domestic capital formation, rely heavily on external investment flows. However, divergent legal interpretations, divergent supervisory approaches, and misaligned operational systems hinder efficient cross-border
