Irish Presidency secures agreement to tackle insider dealing and market abuse
26 June 2013
Welcoming the agreement, Irish Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan TD, said: "These new measures will ensure better protection for investors and consumers and will ultimately provide for greater stability in financial markets".
Today in Brussels, the Irish Presidency negotiating team secured Coreper’s support to reach an agreement with the European Parliament on new EU rules to tackle insider dealing and market abuse. The agreement sets out new rules, in the Market Abuse Regulation, to
-
Introduce tougher and more harmonised sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation;
-
Keep pace with technological and market developments through extending existing regulatory framework to cover new trading platforms, over-the-counter trading and high frequency trading;
-
Strengthen the fight against market abuse across commodity and related derivative markets;
-
Reinforce the investigative and sanctioning powers of regulators regarding insider dealing and market abuse;
-
Reduce the administrative burden on SME issuers.
The new rules also clamp down on the manipulation of financial benchmarks, such as Libor and Euribor.
On this point the Minister said: "The Libor scandal brought to light the kind of market manipulation that can take place if markets are not properly regulated. We needed to address this, and we have done so with these new EU wide rules."
The Irish Presidency negotiated with the European Parliament on behalf of EU Member States and this agreement is still subject to final approval of the European Parliament.
Press release
© Irish Presidency
