Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-03-Speech-3-348"
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"en.20011003.11.3-348"2
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". – The Commission takes heart from the broad support for the Commission's objectives in the field of
commerce and financial services – support evidenced by the report of your Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. I welcome that report as being most balanced and constructive. I draw strength from Parliament's clear commitment to the country-of-origin approach which, if I am not mistaken, has been supported by all who spoke on this subject this evening.
Finally, I take note of Parliament's interesting suggestions that the Commission should seek to negotiate mutual recognition agreements with third countries, at least with those third countries that provide similar levels of prudential supervision and investor protection. The Commission finds that a very valuable suggestion and we should like to consider it further.
In conclusion, I very much welcome the draft report as its stands. I should like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Huhne, for his strong support for the country-of-origin principle. Indeed all speakers this evening have echoed this strong support. I nonetheless express concern about a number of the amendments which were recently tabled by some honourable Members. Several of the amendments, unfortunately, are not acceptable to the Commission. They would shift the balance of this report unfavourably and undermine the strong support which Parliament has shown for the Commission's
commerce strategy in the past. That support was so manifest and so vital at the time of the adoption of the electronic commerce directive last year, when Members voted unanimously in favour of the directive and the underlying country-of-origin approach. That is precisely the approach which the Commission, with the support of Parliament, would like to continue.
In particular I welcome the report's rejection of any attempt to roll-back the
commerce directive in the area of financial services. That is a position very much shared by the Commission and strongly defended during the negotiations on the distance marketing directive which, as Members may or may not know, resulted in a political agreement at last Thursday's Internal Market Council. We will follow that line in future proposals and negotiations.
I should like to pick up on a few key points made in the report. They are points which were also raised by various Members in the debate.
On the need for a road map setting out what needs to be done and when, in May the Commission published a financial services policy group report to the Ecofin Council. That contains just such a road map and hopefully brings greater clarity about the way forward. Amongst other things that road map sets out the concrete steps that must now be taken to enable the country-of-origin approach to apply across the board to cover those financial services currently derogated and to be applied to other traditional distance training modes.
In broad terms, that would involve further convergence in national consumer protection rules, in particular by updating EU legislation which predates the
commerce directive.
On the Commission's guidance, where it is our aim to add transparency to situations under which Article 3(4) might be invoked, I should like to inform Parliament that this exercise was launched in July. We are now in the process of receiving the first replies from Member States. I should like to assure Parliament that it is not the Commission's intention for the guidance to represent a de facto additional derogation to the country-of-origin approach and that the guidance will be reviewed to take account of progress and further harmonisation of consumer protection rules, with the aim that it should become redundant by the 2005 Lisbon deadline for an integrated European market in financial services.
In respect of this point I would particularly like to say to Mr Radwan that earlier this year the Commission helped to put in place a network for the handling of cross-border complaints in financial services which ought to serve to raise still further the level of confidence of consumers who venture onto the Internet. I hope that is to the liking of Mr Radwan.
May I further welcome Parliament's call for a single payments area in which it would be easy and cheap to transfer money across borders. I should like to recall that in July the Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation to align the costs of cross-border payments with those made at national level.
I can also inform Parliament that with a view to making payments more secure, the Commission in February adopted a communication on the prevention of fraud and counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment, which set out a three-year action plan. This point was also raised by Mr Harbour and I should like to add that the Commission is looking into the possibility of refunds. I will inform Mr Harbour later of the progress in this respect."@en1
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