Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-22-Speech-1-100"
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"en.20011022.7.1-100"2
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"Mr President, to tie in with the rapporteur’s closing words, I wish to thank everyone who has taken part and especially the Commission staff for their help. The issue of concern to us, however technical it is, is of extraordinary political and social importance because it is widely known that undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS), including pension funds, are currently the preferred form of saving for the majority of European citizens.
The first problem we came up against was that there were two directives: one called a ‘product’ directive, which allowed these bodies to invest in products from which they were hitherto denied access, and another, which proposed substantially increasing capital requirements. Both the Commission and Parliament were tempted to immediately adopt the so-called ‘product’ directive and delay the adoption of the so-called ‘management’ directive. This Parliament warned that it was dangerous to allow these undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities – which, I repeat monopolise the market in public savings – to move into deeper waters without any guarantee that their ships were prepared for what would be a more daring day’s sailing than they had hitherto embarked on.
As the rapporteur indicated, the purpose of the first discussion – and I am limiting myself here to the product directive – was to decide what they could invest in. He referred to non-standardised derivatives, index funds, the cascade effect, etc., which are technical issues that I will not go into now. What I do want to say is that, in my group’s opinion, a balance has been achieved between giving greater opportunities to management bodies and, therefore, greater opportunities to investors and the protection, the caution, that must be present in any discussion of such delicate matters.
Parliament wanted to send a message to the Commission. As on previous occasions, Parliament wants to be flexible on the adoption of the directives of the financial services action plan. We want this directive to be adopted rapidly and we do not, therefore, want to have to go to conciliation. We have therefore, limited our amendments to one – which I personally am not in favour of, although I will be voting for it – which consists of creating a ‘grandfather’ clause, in other words, creating a transitional period so that currently existing bodies have additional time in which to raise their capital.
Mention has been made of another amendment by Mr Goebbels, which he is going to withdraw, but I think it is extraordinarily intelligent and is the second message that Parliament is sending to the Commission. The first, I repeat, is not tabling amendments that cannot be accepted by the Council and the Commission. The second, even though we are not involved in a Lamfalussy procedure, is to warn that we will always have to be flexible. We will always show willingness to be flexible on the legislative procedure, but we are not prepared to concede the codecision powers that Parliament has taken such a long time to gain."@en1
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