This CFA Institute white paper gives an overview of the European Commission’s Capital Markets Union (CMU) initiative. The paper presents the current state of the European capital markets and what the CMU initiative could mean for investors in the European Union and globally. To inform our analysis of the initiative’s key issues and to formulate our policy considerations, presented here, we conducted a survey of CFA Institute members. The white paper also covers the European Commission’s public consultations on the revision of the Prospectus Directive and on simple, transparent, and standardised securitisation.