Brussels, 25/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 25 October during a plenary debate, Markus Ferber (EPP, Germany) hoped that the European Parliament would grant him a clear political mandate this Friday on the forthcoming negotiations with the Council on the revision of the European rules on markets in financial instruments (MiFID II package) - (see EUROPE 10698). The European Parliament will vote on the amendments put forward but not on the legislative resolution in order not to complete the first reading of the procedure.
“I am pleased to have had such support from the extreme right to the extreme left. It's a question of knowing on which market the negotiation of financial products is taking place. Not of demonising the financial markets”, Ferber said. In his view the regulatory framework that must be provided should enable financial markets to provide a “capital gain” for the whole of the economy and not just for themselves.
HFT. The draft report obliges high frequency trading (HFT) actors to retain their orders for at least 500 milliseconds. If used for manipulative purposes, HFT can be very dangerous, Ferber said. European Commissioner for the Internal Market Michel Barnier advocated a “complete review” of the HFT rules. Willing to recognise the usefulness of HFT in terms of liquidity, he said that it was undeniable that this market segment - which all the same represents 40% of the financial transactions in Europe - constitutes “a source of systemic risk” too. (MB/transl.fl)