Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-13-Speech-1-102-000"
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"en.20120213.17.1-102-000"2
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"Mr President, this may be a surprise, but problems at Schipol airport, where there was a bomb alert today, have meant that Ms Essayah unfortunately cannot be here at the moment, so she has asked me to represent her.
For ease of adaptation to the new system, several waivers provide a two-year transition period after the end-date. For example, a Member State may allow companies which use badge files sent to their payment service providers to avoid using the standard message format XML for two years. A Member State may also allow consumers to use their old bank account number instead of IBANs for two extra years.
The Payment Services Directive is being reviewed later this year; this will be an important step in finalising the entire system and ensuring that it works. On behalf of Ms Essayah, I would like to underline that we are very happy for both citizens and companies in the European Union and throughout the SEPA area that all cross-border transfers and direct debits can be done as if they were normal domestic payments. We have now managed to achieve a real single European payments area.
On her behalf, I would like to say that she is very happy with the outcome of the trialogue and the agreement which we reached with the Commission and the Council. She would like to thank the representatives of the Council, Commissioner Barnier, the Chair of the ECON committee, Ms Bowles, the shadow rapporteurs and all those who proposed amendments and contributed to this excellent result, as well as the ECON Secretariat which makes our work possible.
The completion of the Single European Payment Area is of great importance for the European internal market and has numerous benefits for our citizens. From February 2014 onwards, all electronic payments in the euro area will be as easy as cash payments. Citizens and companies will benefit from SEPA in several ways, but the most obvious of them is that is possible to make payments to all over Europe from a single bank account. That is now possible for everyone.
All cross-border debit and credit transfers can now be done as if they were normal domestic payments. With SEPA only one bank account is needed for the whole euro area by using the international bank account number or IBAN. This has many great advantages: only one bank account will be needed for the whole euro area. If a person is working abroad he or she will not need a new bank account in that country and may receive his or her salary to the one bank account in his or her own home country.
SEPA will also make it possible to use one and the same debit card anywhere in the euro area, so when you are on holiday or visiting another euro area country you will be able to benefit from these possibilities.
SEPA is good news at present concerning the euro and the EU. It will open up national markets to competition and make the payment sector more effective. According to an impact study published by the Commission, SEPA will benefit the European economy by EUR 123 billion over the next six years. The benefits will be even greater because SEPA creates favourable conditions for innovations such as automatically combining payments with the book-keeping of a company. This is the case in Finland and in other countries such as the Netherlands, which started implementing SEPA at a very early stage.
Easy payments also make it very easy to buy goods and services via the internet from all over the EU. Consumers will have real options to compare prices and get the best price. Buying a computer from the cheapest EU retailer may save hundreds of euros, making prices go down everywhere in the single market. Therefore SEPA is in many ways essential for a well-functioning internal market.
Since moving to SEPA has been too slow in the past, this regulation sets a clear end-date for the transition. Parliament has succeeded in negotiating a single end date for both SEPA credit transfers and direct debits: 1 February 2014. In those Member States which do not have the euro as their currency, the date will be 30 October 2016. This will make it easier to adapt to the change and to carry out information campaigns for consumers.
Parliament has also achieved the right level of consumer protection: consumers may now instruct their banks to limit direct debit collection to certain amounts and to establish positive or negative lists of payees. It will no longer be necessary for consumers to provide banks with special BIC codes for domestic or cross-border payments after the end-date and after two years."@en1
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