On Thursday 15 September, the European Parliament approved its negotiating position on the proposed regulation of the Commission modifying the rules on the prospectuses that European companies wishing to raise capital must publish to provide potential investors with information.
Readers may recall that the S&D Group had asked for a vote in plenary on the negotiation mandate, as its oral amendments were rejected during the parliamentary committee's vote (see EUROPE 11593). Generally speaking, the vote of the parliamentary committee suffices.
The Council has also adopted its position (see EUROPE 11569); the inter-institutional negotiations may therefore get underway. The European Commission published a communication the day before on its action plan to set in place a Capital Markets Union, calling on the institutions to conclude the first round of legislative initiatives, presented last year.
The Eurpean Parliament's text aims to give new incentives to the smallest businesses to issue securities, but these businesses will be able to produce a reduced version of the prospectus, the 'EU growth prospectus'. This 'lite' regime will cover, amongst other things, public share offers of less than €20 million. The text also gives the states the leeway to decide to exempt issuances of securities of less than €5 million. The Council's position is described in EUROPE 11569.
The European Parliament has "gone further than the European Commission by developing a more harmonised and truly European regime", said the Czech MEP Petr Jezek (ALDE), the rapporteur on this dossier. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)