With the aim of mobilizing the one trillion euros that Spaniards hold in deposits and savings accounts, the Government has opened a public consultation on the conditions for the European Savings and Investment Account in Spain and the “Finance Europe” label.
The European Savings and Investment Account—SIA (Savings and Investment Account)—aims to channel “idle” European savings, roughly 13 trillion euros held by savers in their accounts, toward stock and bond markets to fund essential programs for Defense, Energy Transition, and more. To achieve this, the goal is to implement a European Savings and Investment Account—defined by each individual country—where shifting funds from deposits to bonds or stocks, or vice versa, is not fiscally penalized.
The starting point is the Swedish ISK account model, which allows investing without being taxed on every transaction. Instead, a fixed annual tax is applied to the account’s total assets, which is exempt below 150,000 crowns (approximately 14,000 euros). In Italy, PIRs (Individual Savings Plans) offer total exemption from capital gains, dividends, or interest if the investment is held for five years.
The European Commission—which has very limited powers in this area due to the lack of fiscal harmonization in Europe—has asked each country to define its own savings and investment account, pointing out that without attractive tax incentives, it will be impossible to achieve the goal of mobilizing savings.
