Brussels, 29/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - The French Senate's European affairs committee expressed doubt on Thursday 28 November about the European Commission's draft regulation to boost the reliability of financial benchmarks. Rapporteur Richard Yung said on Friday 29 November that, in the draft legislation, the Commission gave the impression that is had simply removed anything that might be controversial to ensure the regulation was adopted in the current European Parliament. Benchmark supervision, for example, was given exclusively to ESMA in the Commission's initial draft, but this was then changed. Yung says that the current version raises the fear of a plethora of supervisors. He says systemic benchmarks should have been the focus. The Commission's draft proposals will be discussed for the first time at the EU Council of Ministers (among technical experts) early next year. Progress was made on criminal penalties under the market abuse directive at the trialogue talks on 28 November, so it is possible that the 10 December trialogue will seal a deal. (EL/transl.fl)