Brussels, 19/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Clearing and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring Expert Group (CESAME) met for the first time on Friday. Its missions is to advise the Commission on legislation pertaining to post-market operations leading to the complete conclusion of the transfer of a share between the buyer and seller.
The group is chaired by the Commission, and its main political advisor is Alberto Giovannini, who is already the president of the financial expert group which put two reports to the Commission on the integration of clearing and settlement systems.
Last April, the Commission launched a new consultation (ending on 30 July) on a draft framework directive governing the market and proposing the creation of this expert group. The directive's aim is to guarantee non-discriminatory market access, based on the principle of mutual recognition. In this draft, the Commission did not attack the monopolies of Euroclear and Clearstream which currently dominate the market, or national legislation which sometimes requires the players to go through a public operator.
At the beginning of June, however, the Commission spoke out against the abuse of its dominant position by Clearstream Banking (a daughter company of Deutsche Börse), which had been refusing to provide clearing and settlement services to Euroclear Bank for registered shares issued under German law.