(Bloomberg) -- The European Union pledged to accelerate the timeline for proposals on more unified supervision of capital markets to later this year as it tries to advance an issue seen as increasingly crucial to providing finance to sectors like defense.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, set out the proposed strategy on Wednesday, speeding up the timing of proposals from a previous draft seen by Bloomberg.

In particular, it now aims to deliver by the fourth quarter of this year on “measures to strengthen supervisory convergence tools, and make them more effective,” as well as a plan for more unified supervision of capital markets that could include transferring some tasks from national authorities to the EU level. Both were originally seen coming in 2026.

The “Communication on the Savings and Investment Union” also sets out a plan to publish a report assessing the state of competitiveness in the EU banking sector in 2026.

The EU’s acceleration comes against a backdrop of rapid regulatory dismantling in the US and the UK. The Trump administration has been radically redrawing regulatory boundaries, including the demise of its consumer protection regulator. London, meanwhile, axed its payments regulator and announced a series of industry-friendly rule changes.

Policymakers like former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi have called on the EU to deepen its financial union to enable the bloc to compete with the likes of the US and China. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has made the issue one of her key priorities, in order to accelerate funding for areas such as defense.

The EU’s plan for its savings and investments union aims to mobilize more private and retail capital within the bloc, including an estimated €10 trillion ($10.9 trillion) in savings held in bank accounts.

“The EU’s economic competitiveness and security critically depend on the ability of innovative startups and scale-ups to access capital,” according to the EU document released Wednesday. Some of the priority areas it listed include artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotech and clean-tech sectors and defense.

Supervision has been a key point of contention in the push toward more unified capital markets in the EU, with some officials calling for the European Securities and Markets Authority to be turned into a European version of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.