The European Savings and Retail Banking Group (ESBG) believes that the draft regulation on access to financial data ‘FIDA’ (see EUROPE 13538/18) is insufficiently aligned with the objective of reducing the regulatory burden, promoted by the European Commission’s ‘Competitiveness Compass’ (see EUROPE 13568/1).
“FIDA, as currently designed, introduces disproportionate burdens, lacks operational feasibility, and does not adequately reflect the radically changed environment since its initial proposal”, says the ESBG in a press release published on Friday 11 April.
“There is a lack of clear evidence supporting customer demand for FIDA, and past experiences with PSD2 [Directive on payment services - editor’s note] (see EUROPE 13211/15) indicate that the implementation costs could be significantly high for the European financial institutions”, maintains the organisation, which represents some twenty national associations of banks or banking groups from the European Union and the European Economic Area.
In particular, the ESBG fears that the regulation will only benefit non-European players who already dominate the market, to the detriment of local financial institutions, SMEs and European sovereignty over data.
The group is calling for the scope of the regulation to be restricted to targeted uses, for large companies to be excluded from the scope and for access to data to be prohibited for service providers from third countries. In the absence of an in-depth revision, the organisation considers that the withdrawal of the text should be envisaged.
At the end of March, several EU countries expressed concern about the administrative burden that the future regulation could entail (see EUROPE 13611/15). (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)