Strasbourg, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - With the adoption last week of the report by Spanish Socialist Fernando Pérez Royo, the Parliament introduced 19 amendments to the draft directive on financial guarantee contracts. Pending the opinion of the EP, the Ecofin Council adopted, on 13 December, a general guideline on this text that will harmonise the guarantees required of the financial institutions, in order to limit the risks linked to the use of credit during financial transactions. The Parliament sets out in detail the definition of the financial establishments concerned, "for legal security reasons". The Parliament amended the text so that only one of the counterparts (and not two) can be a public authority, a central bank, a financing establishment or an entity other than natural person. The aim is to allow all enterprises including SMEs to benefit from a financial guarantee contract. The Parliament, on the other hand, rejected an amendment put forward by Pervenche Berès and 40 other MEPs, which would have excluded unregulated companies from the scope of the directive and would have included reinsurance firms. The aim of the amendment was to prevent the directive from putting the credit banks before the social organisations and workers in the event of bankruptcy. France had raised this issue in Council.