27 February 2007

ECOFIN results

At its meeting on 27 February the ECOFIN Council welcomes the Eurosystem's intention to take a final decision on the launch of T2S after consideration of several issues and completion of the feasibility study.

It notes that the T2S project is restricted only to the settlement layer of the post-trading activity regarding securities settled in central bank money and does not involve custody services, asset servicing, corporate actions and all the other activities which are, and which remain separated economic activities, performed by the Central Securities Depositories.

The Council invites the ECB to proceed step by step, examine carefully the results of the consultation and take in particular the following aspects into account when deciding on the way forward on T2S:

The Council stresses that T2S should be open to non-euro area Central Securities Depositories and currencies, subject to agreement between the concerned parties.

The existing securities settlement systems should not be put into question during the migration phase until T2S is implemented; thus the migration phase should be competitively neutral.

The Council invites the ECB to consider continuing its policy of transparency as appropriate also in all future stages of pursuing the project, and to report back regularly to the FSC, the EFC and the Council on the progress on the T2S project, starting with the results of the consultation process in 2007 before a final decision is taken.

The Council took also note of the presentation by the Commission of a report on the monitoring of a code of conduct signed in November. The Commission considers the code to have made a promising start, and will report to the Council as it is further implemented.

Council Conclusions - Towards Better Regulation and reduction of EU administrative burdens

Contributing to the Spring European Council meeting the Council adopted a conclusion, noting that reducing the administrative burden is part of a wider better regulation agenda and supporting a reduction target of 25% for administrative burdens arising from EU legislation to be achieved by 2012.

The Council calls upon the Commission and the Member States to closely work together in order to promptly put the programme into action and solve remaining open questions.

It recommends that the Commission should continue using systematically the agreed “EUStandardCost Model” to measure information obligations in the priority areas and to begin with the measurements in early Summer 2007.

It finally requests the Commission to continuously report on the progress with the reduction exercise and the application of the EU-Standard Cost Model and invites Member States to report on experiences with measuring and reducing administrative burden in their National Reform Programmes.

ECOFIN Council – Key Issues Paper

The ECOFIN Council adopted a key issues paper to be submitted to the European Council on 8 and 9 March, outlining the main policy objectives relating to economy and finance.

On integrating financial markets to raise efficiency and international competitiveness the Council calls for further development of the strategy to create an integrated and smoothly functioning European market for financial services, which was adopted in the Financial Services Action Plan and in the Commission “White Paper on Financial Services Policy 2005 to 2010”.

Main issues include: