EU Capital Markets Law and the Claim for “Simplification”

597 Abstract This paper examines the current debate on the “simplification” of EU financial and, especially, capital markets law, arguing that the term conceals multiple—and often conflicting—agendas ranging from technical rationalisation to de facto deregulation. Against a backdrop of normative inflation and institutional stratification, the analysis distinguishes simplification from deregulation, framing it instead as a methodological commitment to clarity, coherence, and legal reason. The study reviews the positions of EU institutions (Letta, Draghi, and Commission reports), market stakeholders, and selected academic initiatives. It argues that genuine simplification requires a clear conceptual framework, a rebalanced Lamfalussy architecture, and a reconstruction of key taxonomies. The conclusion advances a bottom-up, comparative-law approach as the necessary foundation for reform and identifies simplification as a constitutional duty of the Union, to legislate intelligibly, proportionately, and coherently. Simplification, thus conceived, is not the art of reducing rules but the expression of a renewed European legal reason, capable of reconciling technical complexity with normative intelligibility.