Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-15-Speech-4-050"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070215.5.4-050"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, due to the late addition of this item to the agenda, my colleague Mr McCreevy is unable to be here today and I shall present his considerations. I wish to begin by thanking the Committee on Legal Affairs, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and, in particular, the two rapporteurs Mr Lehne and Mr Klinz for their excellent work on this file.
The compromise package that is now on the table contains very effective solutions to the problems that we have identified, without imposing excessive burdens. These problems, which led the Commission to submit its proposal, were in principle very simple: at the moment shareholders do not receive information on general meetings in time, they face restrictions on trading their shares for a certain time period ahead of the meeting if they want to vote and they often have to go in person to general meetings, even if those meetings take place in another Member State, as there are no effective rules on representation and distant voting. Together with Parliament and the Council, we managed to find simple solutions to these simple problems.
However, we cannot stop there. In particular, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs pointed out, in its opinion of November 2006, other issues that need to be addressed if we want to make the general meeting work efficiently and if we want to further improve the corporate governance of European companies.
We have already identified stock lending as something we should look at more closely in the context of the future Commission recommendation on shareholders’ rights.
We agree that another important issue here is to clarify the role and the duties of financial intermediaries. In today’s financial world, investors depend heavily on intermediaries to provide them with information and voting services if they want to exercise their voting rights. This point has also been stressed by delegations in the Council. The Commission has already undertaken to examine this question thoroughly in the impact assessment to the future Commission recommendation. I think all the parties involved agree that this issue is too important to address without having examined all available opinions and without having carried out a full assessment of the possible consequences.
You might ask why we are considering using only a recommendation in order to tackle these problems. The reason is that the practical processes that are relevant in this context are constantly developing, also due to the constantly improving technology. We do not want to set the current situation in stone, but wish to leave enough flexibility for adjustments. The Commission recommendation will give us this flexibility.
My colleague Mr McCreevy therefore confirmed last month, in a letter to the Chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs, our intention to address this issue, together with others, in the context of the work on the recommendation. I hope you share our view that this is the right way to render the provisions of the draft directive even more effective in practice."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples