Why Germany’s Merz Is Calling for Joint European Stock Exchange

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for the creation of a pan-European stock exchange to serve as a common marketplace for trading equities across the region.

The European Union’s fragmented capital-markets landscape has long been seen as a hindrance to growth and innovation in the 27-nation bloc, where investment has lagged the US and China. The region currently has dozens of primary exchanges, from the partially state-owned bourse in Warsaw to SIX Group AG’s BME in Spain.

Previous attempts to forge closer ties between the EU’s capital markets have borne little fruit. While Merz’s appeal for a “kind of ...