Mr President, the two directives on supervision of the business of electronic money institutions are of the utmost importance to the development of e-commerce in the European Union. The aim has been to ensure the financial integrity of electronic money institutions and to help to cultivate an environment which fosters the development of this new means of payment. Since many of the amendments proposed by the Parliament at first reading have been taken into account, I personally find that the view of the Parliament has been incorporated into the common position to a sufficient extent. The common position reflects a compromise that has been reached after long negotiations in the Council. I am very aware of the fact that any amendments to the Council common position are likely to carry a real risk that the directive will be lost in conciliation, since the directive was, and continues to be, a very delicate compromise. As rapporteur I have tried to avoid pushing the directive to the conciliation procedure. I made a compromise proposal which, unfortunately, was not accepted in my political group. I do not think we could reach a conclusion that would serve the interests of all the parties concerned better than this common position does. So the question for us as Members of the European Parliament is whether the proposed amendments are absolutely necessary compared to the potential risk that we do not get the supervisory framework at all. That would mean that the situation would remain uncertain from the consumers' point of view. I also want to remind colleagues that the amendments now proposed are new and therefore not based on the position Parliament took at first reading. They are all the amendments proposed by the ECB which were unanimously rejected by the Council. I am also afraid that by emphasising the position of the European Central Bank in terms of monetary stability control we will cause difficult problems for the Member States which do not belong to the euro-zone. We have to keep in mind that the ECB has no right of veto when it comes to European Community legislation. The monetary stability control of the ECB is based on the founding treaties of the EC and it should not be expanded through the provisions of EC directives. Amendments Nos 1 and 2 add the words “at par value” to the report. These additional words are not absolutely necessary as Article 3 sets out the terms for redeemability. In that article it is implicit that redeemability will happen at par value unless there are any reasonable charges which would be deducted from the par value. In this latter case the additional words would add nothing and be misleading to the consumer. Adding the words 'at par value' to Article 3(1) may mislead the consumer since it is always possible to deduct the charges that are strictly necessary to carry out that operation. According to the common position Member States may allow their competent authorities to waive the application of some or all of the provisions of the proposed directive. The waiver is possible in cases where the total amount of e-money issued is limited and where the e-money issued is accepted as a means of payments by only a limited number of undertakings. For example, the waiver could be used for university campus payment cards or for local transport systems. All these cases are also subject to a maximum storage amount of no more than EUR 150. In addition, the waived schemes will not benefit from the Single Market passport provisions. The business of these limited national schemes cannot, from a financial stability viewpoint, be compared with the business of large e-money schemes or credit institutions. These limited schemes are not likely to have any spillover effects which could endanger financial market stability. Furthermore, these national limited schemes will not be unsupervised since the text requires any waiver to be subject to a separate decision by the supervisory authorities. Waived institutions would therefore always be registered and monitored by the supervisory authorities. Amendments Nos 3, 4 and 5 reduce the scope of the waiver. It was clear in the Council that the price for having a directive was that a waiver would need to be included as an option. The Council was able to agree its common position only because it felt that a directive, which included a waiver but tightened regulation and permitted competition in a single market, was better than no directive at all. The Commission took a similar view. The sooner the directive is adopted and implemented, the sooner the improved regulation will take effect. If this still raises concerns in practice then the Article 11 review clause is available in reserve. Mr President, at present there is no requirement for supervision of national e-money schemes. Therefore I do not believe that the European Parliament should adopt any amendments or there is a risk that the whole directive may be lost.

Political group: PPE-DE