The EU will decide next year if legal changes are needed to boost the market for securitised debt, a sector seen as key to injecting funds into the economy and encouraging growth, an EU document showed.

The document is another indicator that concern over the level of funding to the EU economy, particularly in the flagging eurozone, has reached the highest political level.

The ‘Roadmap for Securitisation’, drawn up for the bloc’s finance ministers and seen by Reuters, says the recent economic and financial crisis had considerably reduced funding to the real economy.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is also mulling purchases of securitised debt such as asset-backed securities to help boost eurozone growth.

Securitisation, which turns pools of loans into interest-bearing bonds to help raise further funds, has dwindled in Europe due to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

The market was tarnished by the so-called sub-prime crisis, when securitised debt based on poor-quality US home loans became untradable in 2007, sowing the seeds for the ensuing global financial crisis.

The document, which EU finance ministers will discuss at a meeting in Milan next month, lists 19 initiatives under way in Europe and globally to kick-start securitisation.