Seven EU countries to back pan-European savings product label

PARIS (Reuters) -Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Luxembourg and Spain on Thursday will launch a new marketing label for savings products that target European investments, France's finance ministry said. 

The move is intended to be a first limited step towards better integrating the European Union's financial markets, which tend to be fragmented along national lines. 

The seven countries have agreed that the European savings product label will require at least 70% of assets to be invested in EU countries, with a focus on equity investments to help shore up firms' balance sheets, according to a statement from the French finance ministry. 

Products must encourage long-term holding with a minimum five-year investment and offer no public capital guarantees. Any tax incentives will be determined individually by each EU member state.

Competent authorities in each country will be responsible for ensuring that the banks, insurers and asset management firms that use the label meet its criteria. The right to use it will be withdrawn in the event of misuse.

A more ambitious capital markets union has eluded the EU for years in the face of entrenched national interests, different business and financial cultures, and regulations in European countries.

However, it is increasingly seen as essential to boost financing of European companies, which tend to be far more dependent on bank loans than their competitors in the United States, where deep financial markets make raising capital much easier.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas in ParisEditing by Matthew Lewis)