Markets for Financial Instruments: EP will vote swiftly
Date
Sections
The European Commission presented its proposal today to delay the entry-into-force of the EU Directive on Markets for Financial Instruments (MiFID II) by one year to 3 January 2018. The EPP Group welcomes the move and is ready for a swift adoption. "It is good news that the Commission has finally presented its proposal to delay the entry-into-force by one year. The European Parliament will now process the proposal swiftly in order to establish clarity as regards the way forward as soon as possible", said Markus Ferber MEP, the European Parliament Rapporteur on MiFID II.
"I find it difficult to grasp, however, why it has taken the Commission so long to come up with the proposal. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) had indicated problems with the timeline as early as four months ago. One shortcoming of the Commission proposal is that it fails to change the date of transposition in accordance with the overall delay. This makes it almost impossible for Member States to transpose all relevant provisions in time. This is even more of a problem as the Commission is still far behind schedule when it comes to presenting the delegated acts and regulatory technical standards", said the EPP Group MEP.
The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II is at the heart of the post-crisis architecture of European financial markets. The Council of Ministers and the European Parliament reached an agreement in January 2014 which initially intended a complete entry-into-force of the Directive in January 2017. This will now be put forward to January 2018.