Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-30-Speech-1-056"
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"en.20030630.9.1-056"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Huhne, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by giving Mrs Kauppi’s apologies. She regrets that her flight cannot get her here yet, and so she has asked me to stand in for her.
We know that this directive is an important part of the financial services action plan. What are this action plan’s strategic objectives for the financial internal market? The first is that a single wholesale market for financial services should be guaranteed; the second is the creation of open and safe retail markets, and the third is the modernisation of the rules of compliance and of the way in which they are monitored.
What is today’s debate about? Today we are debating the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading. What do we mean by a prospectus? By that we mean a document published when shares or bonds are issued, containing those items of information considered necessary to investors. What does the directive aim at? It aims to introduce a single passport for prospectuses, approved by the authorities in the country of origin and subsequently recognised throughout the EU for the purposes of the public offering of securities and/or their admission to trading on regulated markets. In place of the fifteen separate authorisations still required despite two directives on the subject, only one authorisation will be required under the new directive for what will be the twenty-five Member States of the European Union.
I would like to extend very warm thanks to the rapporteur, to the shadow rapporteurs of all the groups, and also to the chairman of the committee, for the great deal of time and effort that they have devoted to this. Last Thursday, when we were in a conference call, we were in fact even more divided, but it was possible, on the Friday, for us to make a conciliation committee unnecessary; I think this right and proper, as we have no idea whether the conciliation committee would have enabled us to make any progress or might indeed have jeopardised this important directive.
The six major successes achieved by Parliament mean that we can say yes to the compromise. As early as first reading stage, we managed to add the sunset clause to the Lamfalussy procedure, to produce a better definition of professional investors and to take greater account of small and medium-sized firms. At second reading stage, and in recent days, we succeeded in getting a free choice of supervisory authority for non-dividend-bearing securities with a denomination per unit of at least EUR 1 000, which amounts
to a free choice of supervisory authority. We managed to get the deadlines for authorisation reduced; it is still possible for supervisory authorities to delegate; and the position will be reviewed after five years. If, though, the Commission’s report after these five years is an unfavourable one – which I do not expect it will be – the option of delegation will have to lapse after eight years, so that, here too, we have improved the Common Position along the lines desired by Parliament.
This does not mean that everything has been sorted out. It is a cause of anguish to me that there are two things that have not been achieved. One is a rule on basic prospectuses for all banks issuing shares, for which I campaigned. Here – as is, indeed, stated in the recitals – it was not possible to do justice to the aim of this directive, that being to speed the process up. The directive has rather missed the mark here. The second thing that did not get through – although this was adopted with the support of all groups in this House – was the increase in maximum value for each issuer from EUR 50 to EUR 100, in respect of which exceptions are possible. That would have been a help especially for states such as Austria and Germany, where no prospectus is at present required below this threshold. Although it is unfortunate that we did not succeed in this, the compromise is, all in all, a good one, and we will therefore be supporting it."@en1
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