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The Council adopted the amended directives on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems and on financial collateral arrangements as regards linked systems and credit claims, following a first reading agreement with the European Parliament.
The main objective of the amendments is to bring the rules on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems as well as on financial collateral arrangements in line with the latest market and regulatory developments and strengthen the tools for managing instability and turmoil in financial markets by:
Ø protecting the increasing number of linkages between systems to ensure the proper functioning of settlement systems;
Ø establishing a harmonised legal framework for the use of credit claims as collateral in cross-border transactions to increase market liquidity and promote better availability of credit.
To achieve this goal, the amending directive includes provisions:
Ø extending the protection of the settlement finality directive to night-time settlement and to settlement between inter-operable systems;
Ø broadening the scope of the protection provided by both directives to include credit claims in order to facilitate their use throughout the EU;
Ø introducing a number of simplifications and clarifications to facilitate the application of the two directives.