Brussels, 27/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Agreements in principle on the remote sale of financial services and Food Supplements Directives were the two main areas of progress made by the Internal Market/Consumer Affairs Council on Thursday evening, which after having reached agreement on banning penta-BDE, continued its work on the Internal Market side of things, with the following preliminary results:
Remote sales of financial services: Based on a compromise document from the Presidency, the Ministers reached qualified majority political agreement (opposed by Luxembourg) since the problem that had initially caused 5 Member States to oppose the Directive (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium) was settled as follows: countries that want to keep their national legislation in the interests of consumers during the transition towards greater harmonisation, will be authorised to enforce it on suppliers of services established in another Member State which has not yet transposed the Directive into its own law, as long the national legislation is consistent with the Directive. The supplier will have to inform the consumer of the law that would apply in the event of a dispute as part of the pre-contract information that suppliers have to provide. Luxembourg justified its opposition by quoting the uncertainty that would result from this to the supplier. In a statement, Italy (supported by France and Portugal) explained that as far as it was concerned, the concessions made to national law also covered sales of financial products and the rules that applied to the financial intermediaries of the intermediaries which are not subject to mutual recognition. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Finland made a counter-declaration.
Food supplements: As expected, the Council reached qualified majority political agreement on the draft Directive (Austria, Denmark and Greece opposed it, Spain abstained, explaining why in a declaration). EUROPE will return to this.