Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-04-Speech-3-221"
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"en.20080604.24.3-221"2
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"Mr President, as I remarked earlier, the reports are excellent pieces of work. They are thorough and consistent and will provide a significant contribution to our ongoing work on retail and financial services.
I appreciate that some people might wish us to move faster on some of the initiatives, but speed does not always equate to equality. We are committed to our better regulation principles, including thorough impact assessments. Some of our initiatives, such as bank accounts, have been underway for several years and should bear fruit this year. Others, such as our work on retail investment projects, are a little newer and will require more research before we can reach any firm conclusions.
Mrs Roithová referred to bank changes and my colleague Neelie Kroes has dealt with that issue. I would just like to point out that we cannot regulate charges as such, but what we really need is real competition and the ability of consumers to easily switch from providers with which they are dissatisfied. Of course we want to make it easier for them to switch and to have a variety of players in the marketplace. That in itself will bring down prices. Mrs Margarita Starkevičiūtė raised a number of issues. I have noted all her suggestions and we will act on them as far as possible. Mr Ettl spoke about the retail banks. The Green Paper that we published precisely addresses some of these real concerns.
I usually agree with my friend Mr Wolf Klinz but, unless I misunderstood, I detected that he was not so anxious about the switching of bank accounts. What we are trying to do is allow consumers to switch bank accounts easily within Member States. I would just point out that it not rocket science. Other Member States have embarked upon codes of conduct and have done it quite easily. We have given the banking industry an opportunity to self-regulate in this particular area. I have met some of them. Some come up with all kinds of wonderful and wondrous excuses about why it cannot be done, but I can assure them that it is not astrophysics that we are dealing with. It is quite simple to operate and is an opportunity for them to prove that self-regulation is the better way. But, as I said in my earlier remarks, if we do not do this, there are other alternatives available to us.
However, I do agree with Mr Klinz’s second point about the bank structures in various Member States. These are entirely for each Member State to organise, and there are different banking structures in all of the Member States. A Member State itself can organise its structures in any way it wishes, but if it enters into the free market area, it must abide by the rules of the Treaty, and this could sometimes lead to conflict. However, the organisation of the banking structure in a Member State is solely a matter for the Member State concerned.
I agree with Mrs McGuinness regarding the operation of codes of conduct. She referred to the great phase of endowment mortgages. I was a little reluctant ever to go down that road myself and resisted it for years, but at one time, with another person, I allowed myself to avail of one of those. I was one of the lucky ones. I turned out at the end of the period of time with a profit, which was a surprise to me and to everybody else, given my earlier reluctance in that area.
However, I do not think that anybody could be blamed for the way endowment mortgages went. It was the fashion of the time. Everybody believed in doing it this particular way, and there was a fair amount of aggressive selling. But I think that, as long as the consumer is aware of many of the pitfalls, that is what codes of conduct or any type of consumer protection should do. I always say to people in business, whether they be in big or small businesses – and we should be aware as consumers – if a thing looks too good, it is too good."@en1
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