Maksupalvelut sisämarkkinoilla
23.04.2007
Payment services in the internal market (debate)
Monday, 23 April 2007 - Strasbourg
Piia-Noora Kauppi (PPE-DE ). ??? Mr President, I wish to begin by saying that I totally disagree with Mr Whittaker about MiFID and its consequences. I think MiFID will be a revolution for trading in European markets and it will deliver very good results in Europe. I think the Commissioner agrees with me on this.
Overall, the Payment Services Directive represents a very positive step in internal market harmonisation. Like the Commissioner, I believe that with the present agreement we have reached a balance between banks and other service providers on the one hand and consumers on the other. This was an instance in which the market was not delivering the best possible results and regulation was really needed.
I would like to raise three brief points of substance. Firstly, I very much agree with Mrs Bowles concerning capital regime. I would have favoured the EC???s original proposal on capital requirements. I think that it might not be enough of a level playing field, and new access-related barriers might appear especially for non-banks. I should have liked to see a more liberal competition regime in these aspects.
Secondly, on the question of credit granted, especially by credit card companies which are non-banks, there are possible disadvantages for these credit card companies, but we can look at these issues again in our review in three years??? time.
Thirdly, on the liability of payment service providers, I understand that there is an in-built flexibility in payment contracts on what, for example, the payer???s responsibility is in cases like Mr Radwan referred to, when the payment does not appear when it should. However, I think the strict definition on liability in the directive could be too rigid and inflexible and it should have been reformed. On the other hand, we can also go back to this in the review.
Finally, concerning the single reading process, I think Parliament, the Commission and the Council interacted very well on this. However, we were put in a ???take it or leave it??? situation and it would have been better if Parliament had been able to put substantial amendments in place before the vote in plenary. However, all in all the single reading is a good step towards modernising our legislative processes, but it is not an end in itself. We have a good compromise on this directive, but if this is not the case, the single reading should not be used. |
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