Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-12-Speech-1-166"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070312.21.1-166"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, representatives of the Council and the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, after a mere six months, the Council, the Commission and Parliament have come to an agreement on the revision of the directive on the prudential assessment of acquisitions and increase of shareholdings in the financial sector.
Distinguishing in this way between companies from the EU and those from third countries takes account of the fact that the latter’s supervisory and market structures are often not identical with those in the European Union, and that European authorities are therefore not always fully informed about circumstances in those countries. It follows that the supervisory authorities must be allowed more time in which to obtain and evaluate specific information, while the companies from third states also need more time in which to prepare, translate and submit such information. The different suspension periods make both these things possible without breaking WTO rules.
Secondly, the five test criteria are unambiguous and final, and they enable the Member States to use them to define the list of specific information that the potential acquirer must submit, which must include the mode of acquisition of the shareholding and the nature of the potential acquirer, so that less information will need to be sought in the event of straightforward and clearly understandable increases in holdings than in the case of those that are more complex and may involve more than one sector.
The intention is that, two years following the entry into force of this directive, the Commission will conduct a review to establish whether the requests for information are relatively similar across the Member States or whether a divergence is becoming apparent, and it may well be that the Commission will have to intervene and ensure that no such divergences occur.
Thirdly, as the Commissioner has said, the supervisory authorities are required to cooperate closely, although it is specifically laid down that the final decision rests with the authority with jurisdiction over the targeted company, and it is this authority that must also give the reasons for any adverse decision. It is not planned that the publication of those reasons be made mandatory, but the company whose plans for acquisition were thus turned down will be able to demand it. It is equally possible that individual Member States will publish the reasons in accordance with their own laws.
Fourthly, the Commission wanted, for the purposes of ascertaining compliance with the directives, to have direct access to the documentation, but that we refused. Our reason for doing so is that the directive will, in future, make for greater legal certainty and clarity. I am firmly persuaded that this will amount to a further step closer to more cross-border consolidations and hence to an increasing integrated internal market.
It is thanks to the prompt work of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and to the purposeful trilogue negotiations that it will be possible to complete this dossier before spring is out, on the assumption that ECOFIN, on 27 March, agrees to it. That is visible evidence to the public that Europe, even with twenty-seven Member States, is capable of taking action and capable of taking important decisions quickly, even – as the Commissioner has just described – with a complex dossier such as this one.
It is for that reason that I should like, at the beginning of my speech, to briefly thank all those concerned for their good cooperation, especially the shadow rapporteurs Mr Purvis and Mr Muscat, the chairman of the Committee Mrs Berès, and all those Members who have helped to make it a matter of probability that the directive will, tomorrow, be adopted by all of us, from whatever political grouping, in a block vote.
I would also like to highlight the constructive cooperation with the representatives of the Mediterranean states, whom we have been able to convince that their concerns about the fragmented shareholder structure that is so widespread in their countries have been taken into account.
Last of all, I extend warm thanks to the Finnish and German Presidencies of the Council and to the Commission, which have competently accompanied our project and ensured smooth cooperation.
We need this revised directive. In the past, on more than one occasion, individual enterprises have failed to acquire shareholdings in other countries or to take over whole companies in them, simply for lack of an unambiguous legal framework that would have laid down uniform assessment criteria and hence a uniform procedure for the supervisory authorities. That will now change.
The object of the draft directive put forward by the Commission last autumn is greater legal certainty, undoubted reliability and clearly-demarcated decision-making processes, and, since all the interested parties are agreed on these, we have therefore supported it. All three institutions – the Commission, the Council and Parliament – believe that this is the direction in which we must go and that the highest possible degree of harmonisation is needed if people in all the Member States of the European Union are to be able to participate in the market under what really are equal conditions.
Nevertheless, there were, inevitably, differences of opinion on one point or another, particularly as regards the test period or what alternative courses of action might be available if the decision turned out to be negative, that is to say if the application for the acquisition of a shareholding or for the takeover of a whole business were to be turned down. It did, however, eventually prove possible, through negotiations, for these problems to be resolved and for us to reach a consensus.
In future, then, cross-border mergers of credit institutions, insurance companies and investment firms will be made increasingly easier, and there are four reasons why this is the case. Firstly, the supervisory authorities will, in future, have at most sixty days in which to rule on an increase in a holding. That period will be able to be interrupted only once, and for a period of twenty days, for the purpose of obtaining further information when the potential acquirer is from another EU Member State, or for thirty days if from a third country."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples