Europe’s protracted efforts to turn its much maligned markets into a more attractive proposition for investors reach a momentous juncture Monday: the arrival of a consolidated tape. The fragmentation of trading across venues is often blamed for the view that markets in Europe have lower liquidity versus the US, which introduced a country-wide tape five decades ago. Regulators hope the rollout of a unified feed of prices and trading across 29 countries’ markets will start changing perceptions.

Besides issues like diverging legal systems and patchy settlement infrastructure, the European Union has identified piecemeal trading data as one reason investors see the bloc as multiple different markets rather than a single unified one. The tape aims to counter that view by displaying supply and demand data for company shares and exchange-traded funds across the region. The tape, run by Euro CT P BV, a body backed by Europe’s exchanges, won’t be just for professional investors and traders.

Retail investors can also subscribe via a website, helping to level the playing field with larger institutions."Am I excited for Monday? Yes, from a symbolic standpoint," said Alexandre Roubaud, head of ET F markets at Black Rock Inc. in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "Will we see the benefit of the tape overnight? Certainly not."It’s been a slog getting here, almost 20 years since the EU broke up stock exchanges’ grip on trading. In that time, there have been plenty of delays and arguments as countries and industries fought to protect their corners in the change. While Monday’s unveiling marks a moment, it isn’t like flicking a light switch.

Euro CT P needs to get people to sign up to and trust the product, and only time will tell whether it can shift perceptions of Europe’s capital markets and lead to better outcomes for investors and companies. Unlike the US tape, the EU’s will offer best bid and ask prices for a particular security without disclosing the trading venue that generated the quotes. Instead, market participants will see more granular data after a transaction has taken place.

That’s sparked criticism from banking and asset management associations, who argue that won’t be good enough for members to trade on. Just over half of respondents to a recent Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 108 senior buyside traders said they planned to access the EU tape either directly from Euro CT P or third-party providers. Only a fifth thought it could reduce their reliance on direct data feeds from stock exchanges.

Eleanor Beasley, chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs’ EMEA equities business, says the fastest moving investors may not use it for trading at first as they assess the data, but there are still benefits."It is a really useful tool to improve the understanding of the total traded volume," she said. "If you’re a company looking to list or are listed in the region and you think the only volume that trades in your name is on the primary market, I think that this will give you a much better idea as to the total traded volume."Goldman Sachs will contribute to the tape by supplying data from its Sigma X Europe trading venue, as well as consuming data from the feed through its trading operation. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, aggregates and distributes trading data throughout Europe. A consolidated tape is a single feed that aggregates data across multiple execution venues for equity trading.

In Europe, trading is split across different venues, including primary exchanges like Euronext, alternative venues like Cboe Europe, investment bank trading desks known as systematic internalizers and so-called dark pools. Currently, it’s difficult to see the total volume of trading across all of these venues, a problem the consolidated tape is intended to rectify.