and reducing bureaucracy in the single market. it s all part of an eu push to strengthen the bloc s economy and help it catch the us and china. rainer riess, is the director general of the federation of european securities exchanges. how much closer are we getting to cmu? and what would that mean? i think not too close, i think we made some progress, but it is a project that is dating back from 2015, lord hill, the last british commissioner, actually, had the vision to bring european capital markets closer together and to catch up with the us to diversify funding sources for business,er specially for small and medium enterprises and the idea behind it is to foster growth innovation and resilience in the eu economy and obviously this would bring a lot of benefits, lowering barriers within the european union, for cross border investments, making funding more available for smes, strengthening the role of the markets to fund the green position. defence is now a big topic. a lot o