Almost a year after her confirmation hearing before the MEPs of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Financial Affairs (ECON) (see EUROPE 13519/1), the European Commissioner for Financial Services, Maria Albuquerque, spoke on Wednesday 5 November, as part of the dialogue between the EU institutions, about the legislative progress made and the challenges ahead in implementing a ‘Savings and Investment Union’ (SIU) (see EUROPE 13603/5).
Following the proposal to reform the regulatory framework governing securitisation (see EUROPE 13661/26), recommendations on savings and investment accounts (see EUROPE 13720/5) and a European strategy on financial education (see EUROPE 13720/5), a package on pensions aimed at strengthening supplementary pension cover in the EU will be presented shortly, said Ms Albuquerque.
“We will propose tracking systems, dashboards and auto-enrolment, together with revisions to IORP II and PEPP frameworks [the Directive on the activities and supervision of institutions for occupational retirement provision and the Regulation on the pan-European personal pension product, editor’s note]”, the Commissioner clarified.
Another legislative proposal on the integration and supervision of European markets is expected in December, Ms Albuquerque pointed out (see EUROPE 13728/18).
For the commissioner, the objective will be: - reduce the costs of cross-border activities; - update the pilot scheme based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to stimulate innovation; - make the supervision of cross-border financial groups more effective, in particular by possibly entrusting the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) with “direct oversight of the largest entities”.
Giving credibility to the SIU despite the delays in the Banking Union and Capital Markets Union. Questioned by several MEPs on the results of her first twelve months in office, the European Commissioner assured them that she was moving forward at a steady pace, stressing the need to “start delivering so that we can anchor the expectations” when it comes to credibility.
“We may be facing a credibility problem when we talk about advancing with the SIU, because it's partly completing the banking union, a project that has been long delayed, and also delivering on the Capital Markets Union. And we keep announcing, and we have not delivered nearly as much as we have announced”, she regretted, hoping to count on the co-legislators to speed up the legislative work. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)