The co-legislators had until Tuesday 27 February to object to the final draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) on strong customer authentication and secure common communication in the framework of the revised directive on payment services (PSD2), which the Commission adopted on 27 November of last year (see EUROPE 11912).
Readers may recall that there were many differences of opinion on these RTS between banks and FinTech companies (see EUROPE 11733), but also between the Commission and the European Banking Authority (EBA) (see EUROPE 11839).
The three-month period expired with no objections from the Council of the EU or the Parliament. However, the Czech Republic issued an online statement on 23 February stating that despite substantial support for the final proposal, it had ultimately decided to raise an objection to these RTS, as it considered that on certain aspects, the text was not a balanced compromise.
Broadly, its criticism of the text concerns its lack of subsidiarity. “There is no reason for defining uniform limits, e.g. for contactless or low-value payments, when there are substantial differences in prices of goods and services between members of the bloc”, the statement reads.
The Czech Republic explains that although it is possibly understandable to make contactless card payments less practical but more secure in countries in which these payments have not yet been largely adopted, the same approach could lead to negative reactions in countries in which they are used in 90% of cases.
At the end of January, the EBA also still had misgivings about the text, of which it notified the Commission in a letter (see EUROPE 11948). In its response, dated 16 February, the Commission said that the new amendments to the final version go towards the initial position of the EBA, even though it had not been consulted again.
According to our information, the RTS are expected to be published in the Official Journal of the EU on 7 March and will apply following a transition period of 18 months, i.e. in September 2019. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)