EU push for legal harmony in finance services

The European Commission is preparing an ambitious push to speed up efforts to harmonise European legislation on financial services, in a bid to meet the 2005 deadline for the creation of a single market.

There is clearly ground to be made up. The fastest piece of legislation approved so far in the sector took 25 months.

Even the directive that passed most quickly was too late. It was a three-page piece of legislation on how banks calculate market risks, aimed at enabling European banks to improve their competitiveness.

The US agreed the same measure at the same time, passing it on to its statute books in just six months. By the time EU states had reached agreement, all the relevant business had passed to the US.

"Our banks were very very upset about it and were screaming at us, but now they've lost that business there's no way to get it back," one Commission official said.

Banks and investors are urging the Commission to get a framework in place for a single market as they want to take advantage of the euro and sell across borders.

"We want this to move forward and we're very disappointed if we see delays at a major policy level and in the detail," said Mr Jaap Kamp, EU liaison officer at ABN Amro.

The chief executives of six leading EU banks wrote to EU economic and finance ministers in June urging them to agree a joint approach to online banking and how this could be integrated into the EU's overall strategy on electronic commerce.

The European Commission will bring out an advisory paper in November. The Commission is now preparing eight pieces of legislation in the next six months as well as seven advisory papers or interpretations of existing rules.

The Commission itself must adopt these rules by the end of the year to give EU governments and the parliament time to agree for them to be passed into national law by the 2005 deadline.

Officials are consulting the industry and governments over changes needed to update the key investment services directive to deal with the rise of over-the-counter trading, and how to supervise investment operators not trading on an established exchange.

Over the next few months, the Commission will put together a detailed analysis of the benefits of an integrated EU capital market to try to inject more political momentum into agreement on legislation.

The Commission wants to present governments with figures that show how much the EU is losing out by having a fragmented market for financial services.

At another level, it is also compiling figures on the cost of mortgages, for example, in different member-states as well as wholesale financial products such as syndicated loans, to try and put pressure on governments to move towards a single market.

Mr Frits Bolkestein, single market commissioner, said recently countries were losing out by not having a single, integrated market for financial services. "Now is the time to accelerate efforts and create momentum," he said.

In order to get the rules passed more quickly, officials are trying to draft legislation that does not include a huge amount of detail so that it can be amended easily to deal with changing market circumstances.

Officials are also trying to speed the passing of new rules by trying to reach informal agreements with the European parliament to get directives on a fasttrack.

They also want more scope to change technical details in existing legislation without having to go through the lengthy approval process, although other EU institutions are unwilling to cede much power to the Commission.

While the Commission is preparing much detailed legislation, it will also be working with a "wise men's group" that is expected to be convened by the French (who hold the presidency of the EU) at a meeting of economic and finance ministers on July 17th.

It will be chaired by Mr Alexandre Lamfalussy, the former top central banker, and plans an initial report by November.

But unless the EU can speed up its decision-making process, banks may complain again that by the time rules are passed, business has migrated elsewhere.