In NEGlobal.eu, Emelie Franzén, Research Coordinator at EPICENTER, argued that Nordic Compass, an industry alliance chaired by former Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, is exploring a merger of the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish stock exchanges into a single regional marketplace. This would be a first concrete step towards the capital markets integration Europe has debated since 2015. She stressed that Europe’s problem is not a shortage of capital but that it remains fragmented, nationally siloed and largely idle, and that no public budget, however generous, can substitute for private capital in delivering the competitiveness agenda. While a Nordic union would leave European companies still navigating 27 different rulebooks, Franzén argued that only a genuine European capital market matches the scale of the problem, and urged leaders to treat the Nordic model as a template for bottom-up action before the Nordics go it alone.