Strasbourg, 15/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has worked out a compromise with the Council by adopting the report of Green MEP, Alain Lipietz (France), on the Directive that will require financial conglomerates (groups operating in the banking, investment or insurance sector) to have sufficient amount of their own funds. He reduced the threshold for financial activities for companies that can be considered conglomerates from 40%-50%. If the Commission found this modification acceptable, Commissioner Fritz Bolkestein, however, opposed the amendments that leave more room for manoeuvre to companies in calculating their overall solvency and that limits the Directive to company subsidiaries. In recalling the case of Banesto in Spain, the Commission explained that mutual funds like Rabo Bank in the Netherlands and DG Bank in Germany would be excluded from the Directive. The rapporteur and the Commission, nevertheless, estimated that the agreement could be concluded in the first reading with the Council. The rapporteur pointed out the importance of the document in the context of the Enron affair and the development of withdrawals of capital. Mr Goebbels posed the question of, "What would happen if long-term savings of future pensioners was mixed up in a private investment crash?, while giving his assurance that the EU would thus be "enron-proof"