On Monday 5 November, the committee on economic and monetary affairs (ECON) of the European Parliament adopted the draft report by Ashley Fox (ECR, UK) on the proposed regulation to facilitate crowd funding.
Readers may recall that the European Commission's original proposal provided for a European passport to allow crowdfunding platforms to apply to provide their services throughout Europe, following the prior authorisation of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) (see EUROPE 11977).
As reported, however, the MEPs took position in favour of renationalising the framework (see EUROPE 12129).
The compromise text, which was adopted by a sizeable majority (38 votes to 5), takes up the rapporteur's proposal to entrust the authorisation and supervision of crowdfunding service providers to the national competent authorities, giving ESMA just a mediation role in the event of disagreements between the various competent authorities if authorisation is granted or withheld.
If no agreement between the competent authorities concerned is reached during the mediation phase, ESMA may then make a decision requiring them to take specific measures.
The MEPs also agreed to increase the limit for crowdfunding offers to €8 million over one year, where the Commission had proposed a limit of €1 million.
It is worth noting that they explicitly included intermediated crowdfunding services in the scope of application of the regulation.
In another departure from the Commission's text, the EP's version allows service providers to own a financial stake in a crowdfunding offer on their platforms, as long as information about this is made clearly available to customers.
The MEPs also tightened up the handling of complaints, stipulating that each service provider must ensure that its customers are able to complain about it free of charge.
ICO. As anticipated, the rapporteur's suggestion of using this proposal to govern certain initial coin offerings (ICO) (see EUROPE 12084) was not retained, as the compromise between the ECR and EFDD groups was rejected.
On the same day, the MEPs approved the launch of inter-institutional negotiations with the Council on this dossier. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)