Ireland seeks EU supervision deal by October as Luxembourg's fund centre resists

Ireland's finance minister, Simon Harris, wants European Union governments to agree by early October on the bloc's most contentious financial-market reform in a generation: a drive to hand the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) sweeping new powers to police exchanges, clearing houses and funds directly. For Luxembourg, whose roughly €8 trillion fund industry is the backbone of its economy, how far that centralisation goes is close to an existential question.

Harris, who is also Ireland's Tánaiste, or deputy premier, took the finance portfolio in November 2025 after Paschal Donohoe resigned to join the World Bank. From July he chairs meetings of EU finance ministers, known as Ecofin, for six months as Ireland holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU — putting an Irish minister in the broker's chair on a file that pits the bloc's largest economies against its smaller financial hubs.

A push to build "a true European supervisor"

The fight traces to 4 December 2025, when the European Commission unveiled its Market Integration and Supervision Package, an attempt to revive the long-stalled savings-and-investment union, better known as capital markets union. Under the plans, oversight would move from national regulators to ESMA for:

the largest cross-border trading venues, or exchanges;

systemic clearing houses and central securities depositories;

crypto-asset service providers operating across the bloc.

Six of the EU's biggest economies — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland — have pressed to go further. A working paper drafted by member states and dated 30 April 2026 called for ESMA to become "a true European supervisor," envisaging a phased transfer of responsibilities and joint supervisory "colleges" for asset managers. Officials estimate that around nine large trading groups would fall under ESMA's direct watch at the outset. Because the measures fall under qualified-majority voting rather than unanimity, Ireland and Luxembourg cannot veto them outright.

"I don't think any member state should approach this conversation from a position of fear or national loss. It's not about one member state benefiting or the other, the entire European Union is losing, because investment is leaving our union at a time when we need more." — Simon Harris

Luxembourg's fund centre digs in

Luxembourg is the world's second-largest fund domicile after the United States, home to funds holding about €8.2 trillion in assets at the end of 2025 and servicing well over half of the world's cross-border investment funds. Those funds are authorised and supervised by the national regulator, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF). The finance ministry says the wider financial sector directly employs more than 73,000 people.

The Grand Duchy — like Dublin — fears that concentrating supervision in Paris would nudge firms and jobs toward the French capital. Prime Minister Luc Frieden set out Luxembourg's opposition in March 2025, and finance minister Gilles Roth has repeated it since, most recently in March 2026. Lawyers on both sides argue that the EU principles of subsidiarity and proportionality can be used to narrow the package's scope even if it passes.

The anxiety is shared in Dublin. "If we change the supervisory mechanism and give more empowerment to ESMA, it will unsettle the market," warned Regina Doherty, a Fine Gael member of the European Parliament, cautioning that centralisation could erode the competitiveness of Ireland's financial-services centre. Ireland's own central bank has questioned whether an institutional overhaul is needed at all: Governor Gabriel Makhlouf has argued that closer cooperation between national and European regulators to apply the rulebook consistently would be "more effective and more durable than any institutional restructuring."

A parallel fight over tobacco

Supervision is not the only Brussels file testing Luxembourg's nerves under the Irish presidency. The Commission's proposed overhaul of the Tobacco Taxation Directive, tabled on 16 July 2025, would sharply raise EU minimum excise rates — untouched for more than a decade — and link them to affordability, a formula that would fall heavily on wealthy, low-tax Luxembourg.

Tobacco is unusually lucrative for the Grand Duchy. Excise receipts are worth more than 1 percent of GDP, far above the EU norm, because cheap Luxembourg prices draw cross-border shoppers and transiting motorists; most of the cigarettes sold there are consumed beyond its borders. Roth has described the Commission's plan as excessive.

Here Luxembourg holds a stronger hand. Unlike the supervision package, tax measures require unanimity in the Council, giving any single government a veto. That leaves Ireland — which levies the EU's highest tobacco taxes, around €10.71 a pack, and backs tougher rates — to broker between health-driven reformers and revenue-protecting holdouts. A first compromise text circulated under the Danish presidency in December 2025; adoption is not expected before 2027, with implementation pencilled in for 2028.

The clock to October

Harris has set himself a tight deadline. He chairs his first Ecofin as presidency-holder in mid-July and wants the supervision and capital-markets file resolved by early October, warning that inertia is the real threat. "If only one person moves, there's not going to be a deal," he has said, pressing capitals to compromise. For Luxembourg, the calculation is whether to trade ground on ESMA now or hold the line — betting that its fund centre, and its veto on tax, still give it leverage in a Union increasingly minded to centralise.