Brussels, 19/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - As announced in its Green paper on financial services between now and 2010, the Commission is to adopt its proposed directive on payments, most likely on 12 or 19 October (see EUROPE 8941). This legislative initiative will aim to remove legal and technical differences which subsist between the Member States, and which are obstacles to the creation of effective payments to within the internal market. Cross-border payments must become as easy as national payments, said a Commission source, "and for this, the rules will have to be the same in all the Member States". The proposed directive will indicate the nature of payment service beneficiaries and harmonise the legal and information rules on these services. It will also deal with issues related to "irrevocability, duration and liability ". A distinction will be drawn between the Member States of the euro zone and those which have not adopted the single currency. For the euro zone, the directive will provide that during any transaction, the sum total of the money will reach the beneficiary without any charges being deducted from the transferred sum. This kind of measure is not possible when the transaction involves the use of different currencies. The directive will also include a limit of three days for any cross-border payment carried out within the euro zone, whilst it will provide for the conventional agreement between financial establishments necessitating a currency conversion procedure. Taking account of deadlines of about one year both for the adoption of the directive and its transposition in the Member States, the legislative work is likely to move forward at the "same speed as the preparations of the industry". The European Payments Council (EPC), which is made up or of the European Banking Federation, the European Savings Banks Group and the European Association of Co-operative Banks, is to "make concrete proposals in 2008". It has set the date for the implementation of a pan-European system in this field for 2010. In July, Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner in charge of the Internal Market, voiced his disappointment at delays in the implication of the roadmap of the EPC) see EUROPE 8995).