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Verbatim report of proceedings
Monday, 21 November 2016 - Strasbourg Revised edition

Green Paper on Retail Financial Services (debate)
MPphoto
 

  Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the Commission. – Mr President, first of all I would like to thank Mr Olle Ludvigsson for his excellent report on retail financial services.

Last year the Commission published its Green Paper on that subject. Its title was ‘Better products, more choice, and greater opportunities for consumers and businesses’. Those remain our objectives. We launched a consultation to ask consumers and businesses for their thoughts on how to achieve them. The responses are shaping our approach to deepening the single market for these services so as to enable consumers to make informed purchases that meet their needs wherever they might be in Europe and to allow financial firms to make the most of economies of scale, lower costs and improve service. We received more than 400 responses to our consultation. This underscores the need to tackle some of the barriers to cross-border retail financial services at European level. I am pleased to see that the conclusions of your report go in the same direction.

Consumers cannot understand why, in our single market, it is still so difficult to purchase financial products from another Member State, particularly as other services are more easily available. Financial firms can have their ambitions to sell into bigger markets frustrated by additional requirements in different European countries.

The Green Paper consultation has now closed. The Commission issued a feedback statement in July and we will follow up with an action plan on retail financial services next year. It will cover a number of areas touched upon in Mr Ludvigsson’s report. The action plan will tackle barriers that consumers face when they want to access financial products at a distance. We want to make it easier for consumers to be identified remotely without weakening important anti-money laundering requirements. We will look into reducing obstacles which financial firms can face when they want to expand into another European country without establishing a physical presence. And we want to give consumers the confidence that they need to purchase products across borders by giving them better access to reliable information and by making sure that they have a right to redress if things go wrong.

The work that we are taking forward with a Consumer Financial Services Green Paper is part of our broader push to build a single market for capital in Europe, a capital markets union. Working together we have a real opportunity to strengthen the single market around the principles of transparency, competition and choice, and we can make the daily lives of European consumers easier. This is an opportunity and, by working together, I hope we can take it.

 
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