How many Single Rulebooks? The EU’s post-crisis policy objective to create a Single Rulebook for investment management

This dissertation investigates the level of progress made towards achieving a consistent EU regulatory framework for investment management. Following the 2007/2008 financial crisis, policymakers in the EU and the world identified the lack of regulatory consistency as a key lesson learned from the crisis. Both internationally at the G20 level and at the EU level, policymakers therefore vowed to put regulatory consistency at the heart of their post-crisis reform efforts. In the EU, this even prompted the creation of the so-called ‘EU Single Rulebook’ concept. EU policymakers quickly proceeded to adopt an unprecedented number of EU legal acts of high legal and technical complexity to create a Single Rulebook. However, despite explicit calls from EU and national parliaments, stakeholders, regulators, as well as audit recommendations by the European Court of Auditors addressed to the European Commission to take stock of to what extent the post-crisis reforms achieved their desired policy objectives, no such comprehensive analysis has been performed yet. Against this background, this dissertation investigates to what extent the enormous post-crisis reforms in the area of investment management achieved the desired policy objectives.