EU executive seeks to cut costs of share trading
April 2nd, 2008 | by admin |BRUSSELS, April 2 (Reuters) - The European Commission willpropose guidelines to European Union states by early 2009 totear down fiscal barriers that bump up the cost of cross-bordershare trading for investors, an EU document said on Wednesday.”As regards fiscal barriers, the Commission intends to issuea recommendation by the beginning of 2009,” said the documentthat EU finance ministers will discuss on Friday.
Although not law, a recommendation would force EU states toexplain why they were not applying the guidelines.
Earlier steps taken by the EU to boost competition in sharetrading by making linkages between operators who clear andsettle trades easier has made other changes necessary.
“Finally, the Commission will soon propose changes to thefinancial collateral directive and the settlement finalitydirective, the aim of the latter to strengthen protection oflinked systems,” the document added.
Tougher regulatory intervention is not needed as a voluntaryindustry code to encourage linkages was working.
“The industry is so far living up to its commitments,” thedocument said.
(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Jan Strupczewski)
