Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-27-Speech-3-127"
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"en.20050427.12.3-127"2
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".
Madam President, I should like to start by apologising to my Dutch fellow MEPs for speaking, not in Dutch but in English, which is, after all, the language of the financial markets. There is also the added benefit that I can address the Commissioner in a language he understands.
Mrs Berès, the chairwoman of our committee, will speak on the issue of better cooperation in a global setting.
Madam President, when the Commissioner’s predecessor Mr Bolkestein started his term, he met with a well-prepared, ambitious set of proposals for the internal market for capital. He presented them in 1999 as the Financial Services Action Plan – FSAP.
Commissioner, I have the impression that you are less fortunate with the heritage concerning the internal market for services that Mr Bolkestein left for you when you came here to Brussels, and which carries his name, or perhaps an ominous nickname. But that is not our subject for today; we will have plenty of time to discuss this further.
I would like to praise Mr Bolkestein for having diligently steered the FSAP through during his term in office. Commissioner, I am very much looking forward to the follow-up plan in the Green Paper that you are to present next week. In the report before you and in the debates that we had in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, we take a positive view of the way the FSAP has been dealt with, but of course we are aware that many of the intentions laid down in the rules still have to be proven in practice.
Major attention should be focused on the implementation and enforcement of the almost 40 sets of rules that have been adopted. Unfortunately, there were some misunderstandings about my report in the form in which it has been presented to the plenary today. Although a broad consensus was reached in committee and we had good compromises, some imperfections slipped in during the committee vote. Since they concern the main thrust of the report, I would like to discuss them first.
The most annoying mistake is paragraph 2 of the text before the House today. It suggests that we should go along with the plea of some lobbyists and journalists that Brussels legislators should commit themselves to a regulatory pause. But that is really not my cup of tea. This paragraph 2 absolutely does not fit into a report that points to so many developments in a dynamic financial market that may pose serious systemic risks and endanger a safe and efficient internal market for financial services. Therefore, I am clearly against tying our hands with a moratorium on legislation. We should stay alert and the Commission should be very proactive. Of course, this new legislation should be thoroughly assessed as to its necessity, its costs and benefits and its wider impact, but less regulation is not always better regulation.
Let me turn to some other elements of the report, such as the Lamfalussy Process. With the well-known disclaimers that you are used to from the European Parliament, the report is quite positive about the Lamfalussy Process. I tend to see the Level Three Committees of regulators in particular as allies for the public interest and the protection of consumers and expert users. I note that they are more and more aware of their important role in harmonising the technical rules and the supervisory practices between regulators in different Member States. The Himalaya report presented by CESR asks for an improved toolbox. We say in the report before the House today that this is a good starting point for further debate. Some important issues have to be resolved in the coming period.
Then there is European-level supervision. In the report we speak positively about a move towards consolidating supervisors. The industry wants to reduce the need to comply with many different supervisors, but on the other hand I can understand the hesitation of regulatory authorities in host situations to give up their competences and to rely completely on foreign supervisors. That is why I insist on taking a further step. Seeing the growth in cross border activity and the concentration of large players in the financial markets, it is time for integrated supervision at European level, possibly via a two-tier system with European-level supervision for large cross-border players without prejudice to the level playing field between cross-border and local players. Not everyone agrees with me on this, but at least in the report we agree that this should be an option that the Commission should also consider further.
Then there is the issue of consumer protection and involvement. Here we stress that the protection of consumers and the guaranteed availability of basic financial services to all consumers should remain a basic condition. I do not think that we should aim at complete harmonisation in relation to retail financial products and service provision, because consumer protection is too different in the various Member States. In the report I propose looking at the option of a 26th regime for pan-European financial products, such as mortgages or insurance products. They may meet the needs of internationally mobile people to work with the providers they are used to in another Member State."@en1
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