Strasbourg, 31/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - With its adoption -by a vote of 177 to 1, with 15 abstentions- of the report by Dutch Christian Democrat Karla Peijs on the Commission's communication on retail payments in the internal market, the European Parliament deemed unacceptable that bank transfers between Member States take longer than national transactions. Parliament invited the European Commission to amend the directive on cross-border payments with the goal of reducing the maximum time period for such operations to three working days and raising the guaranteed reimbursement to EUR 50,000. Below this threshold, transfers within the EU, or at least in the euro zone, should no longer be subject to the compulsory balance-of-payments declaration. Parliament also noted that, given the disappearance of exchange risks, banking commissions should no longer be calculated in terms of a percentage in the euro zone. It would like to see these fees reduced, because they undermine consumer confidence in the euro.
Parliament also called on the European Central Bank to set up a working group as soon as possible and by 1 January 2001 at the latest, composed of representatives of European banks, with a view to developing: (1) a uniform format for European data to replace existing national payments systems; (2) a uniform European banking code.