21 June 2007

Plenary meeting

Results of votes on Wednesday 20 June 2007

Portability of supplementary pension rights
Proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on improving the portability of supplementary pension rights (A6-0080/2007)
Rapporteur: Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP-ED, NL)
Report adopted by a show of hands with amendments

The European Parliament adopted the report on the portability of supplementary pension rights drafted by Ms Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP-ED, NL). This directive allows workers to preserve their supplementary pension rights when they change employment and hence facilitates mobility in the EU.

The Committee report includes both new and old contracts in the scope of the directive while in the Council negotiations this was not the case. It foresees 5 years of employment relationship to acquire the right for the pension or a minimum age of 25 years. It introduces a 5 year transition period following the adoption of the directive for the implementation by Member States.

The report also lists what is meant by fair treatment of the value of dormant rights. In order to keep some perspective for the transfer of capital, the report proposes to come back to the issue in five years following the adoption.

The Council did not reach a common position on this dossier therefore no first reading agreement is possible.

Text adopted

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Results of votes on Tuesday 19 June 2007

Competition Policy 2005
Competition Policy 2005 (A6-0176/2007)
Rapporteur: Elisa Ferreira (PES, PT)
Report adopted by a show of hands with one amendment

The European Parliament adopted an own initiative report of Elisa Ferreira (PES, PT) on the Competition Policy 2005 in response to the Commission Report. The report sounded a positive note overall with regard to the Commission's efforts to modernise competition policy and in particular 'its reinforced stance on combating cartels, its renewed targeting of unauthorised State aid and (...) its achievements in the area of multilateral and bilateral cooperation'.

The report expressed concern about the excessive delay in recovering unauthorised State aid granted by several Member States and called on the Commission to increase the transparency and public accountability of the existing state aid mechanisms and to establish 'clear criteria' for measuring state aid levels. The Commission was also urged to ensure compatibility between state aid and cohesion policy by making sure that state aid does not result in distortion of competition through relocation of companies from one Member State to another, with the ensuing loss of jobs in one region for the benefit of another.

Recommendations made by the report included the need to apply competition law to all players on the European market, whether or not they have their headquarters in the EU, and to make effective the right of victims who have suffered losses as a result of anti-competitive behaviour to obtain compensation.

The report also “recalls the Commission’s commitment to reviewing the ‘two-thirds rule’ as a threshold for finding a Community impact in regard to merger proposals, and suggests that progress in this area and a more consistent approach in the evaluation of comparable merger operations would be welcome whenever decisions taken at national level could have a strong impact on the market structure of neighbouring Member States.”

Competition Policy 2005

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Crisis of the Equitable Life Assurance Society
Recommendation (B6-0199/2007) on the report of the Committee of Inquiry into the crisis of the Equitable Life Assurance Society Committee of Inquiry
Recommendation adopted by 602 votes in favour to 13 against with 64 abstentions, so the Committee's report, drawn up by Diana Wallis (ALDE, UK) is also approved

The European Parliament adopted a report of the Committee of Inquiry into the crisis of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Presenting her report, rapporteur Diana Wallis (ALDE, UK) said this report also identifies a crisis on a truly European scale. She criticized the “failure of regulatory accountability, which ill serves consumer confidence in cross-border financial products.”

The committee concludes that EU life insurance legislation was transposed into British law in an unsatisfactory fashion. In addition, the UK's financial services regulators are severely criticised, notably for their “excessive leniency” towards Equitable Life’s solvency margin.

Policyholders also had difficulties to identify which regulatory bodies were responsible - “home state” or the “host state”. “That must reveal either a fault in our primary legislation or a fault in the way it has been implemented in the UK or other Member States”, Mrs Wallis said.

The UK Government is under an obligation to assume responsibility, the report finds, and should therefore devise an appropriate scheme 'with a view to compensating Equitable Life policyholders within the UK, Ireland, Germany and elsewhere'.

The report calls for stricter rules on insurance supervision and regulation throughout the EU, for Member States and the Commission to improve the transposition and monitoring of EU legislation and for national regulatory authorities to cooperate better.

The report concludes that the Commission, did not monitor the application of the EU insurance legislation effectively, and should in future be “more proactive” on this front 'to ensure that the legislation is producing the required effects'.

Commissioner McCreevy accepted the report's findings that the Commission could have done more to ensure that EU insurance rules were properly implemented and applied in the UK. He reminded MEPs, however, that it was not the Commission's role to be 'regulator of the regulators'.

Equitable Life

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All texts adopted

© Graham Bishop