The European Commission has announced an initiative to strengthen capital markets in central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe (CESEE), to boost financing and investment in the region.

The Vienna Initiative, which was founded in 2008 as a private-public sector platform to secure adequate capital and liquidity support by Western banking groups for their affiliates in CESEE, has currently set up a working group that will report by the end of 2017. The working group's goals are to:

• promote diversification of investment finance in the region,
• begin to analyse structural obstacles and regulatory gaps that are impeding capital market development and
• identify solutions at the national and regional levels.

'Diversifying sources of finance is crucial'

The Vienna Initiative Forum also looked into investment dynamics, priorities and constraints in the region and discussed how new instruments provided by the international financial institutions, focusing on environment, infrastructure, innovation and SMEs can supplement existing funding models.

Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), said: “Strengthening and diversifying sources of finance is crucial in the region today, as the regional catching up process advances and a new model for growth emerges.”

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CTMfile take: This announcement should be good news for corporates that need to raise finance in central and eastern Europe.