The proposals published on 27th March 2014 set out general aspirations for long-term financing, particularly for small & medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and for infrastructure. As with the specific provisions for long-term financing under Solvency II, published in December, real estate is not included. The proposals are summarised in a helpful Q&A also published yesterday that you can download here.

Although the proposals draw together various existing regulatory timetables, they are generally vague on detail. Within the proposals for Solvency II, specific measures for CMBS were published in December. These are discussed here but are unhelpful and make the treatment of CMBS worse rather than better.

Proposals to encourage long-term equity finance through a proposed EU Long-Term Investment Fund regulation were published last year and are discussed here. These proposals passed theie first vote in the EU Parliament on 16th April 2014.