EN 
 
 
OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK 
of 21 October 2005 
at the request of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour 
on a draft regulation amending the Foreign Trade and Payments Regulation 
(CON/2005/37)  
 
1. On 22 September 2005 the European Central Bank (ECB) received a request from the German 
Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour for an opinion on a draft regulation amending the 
Foreign Trade and Payments Regulation1 (hereinafter the ‘draft regulation’).  
2. The ECB’s competence to deliver an opinion is based on the fourth indent of Article 2(1) of 
Council Decision 98/415/EC of 29 June 1998 on the c onsultation of the European Central Bank by 
national authorities regarding draft provisions2, as it contains provisions concerning the collection, 
compilation and distribution of financial and balance of payments statistics. In accordance with the 
first sentence of Article 17.5 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Central Bank, the 
Governing Council has adopted this opinion. 
3. The contents of the draft regulation  
The draft regulation covers reporting obligations for payment transactions. Since the EU standard 
transfer order does not contain a statistical reporting field, the draft regulation provides that statistical data for payments between EUR 12 500 and EUR 50 000 from 1 January 2006 will be 
collected using different forms from those currently used
3.  
4. Another aspect of the draft regulation is that, fo r the purposes of statistical reporting, the Austrian 
areas of Jungholz and Mittelberg will no longer be treated as German economic areas, but rather as Austrian economic areas. This reflects the fact that  when Austria acceded to  the European Union in 
1995 and to economic and monetary  union in 1999, the Austrian areas of Jungholz and Mittelberg 
lost a major share of their former special status  as part of the German customs area. For EU 
statistical purposes, they are treated as part of Aust ria, in particular for the purposes of EU foreign 
trade statistics and the system of accounts, as well as in the ECB’s monetary and balance of 
payments statistics. 
                                                     
 
1  Entwurf einer Zweiundsiebzigsten Verordnung zur Änderung der Außenwirtschaftsverordnung  (draft 72nd regulation 
amending the Foreign Trade and Payments Regulation). 
2 OJ L 189, 3.7.1998, p. 42. 
3  The treatment of cross-border payments between EUR 12 500 and EUR 50 000 will change at EU level on 
1 January 2006, pursuant to Article 3(3) of Regulation (E C) No 2560/2001 of the European Parliament and of the 
Council of 19 December 2001 on cross-border paym ents in euro (OJ L 344, 28.12.2001, p. 13). 
 
2 5. The draft regulation also provides for some stream lining of reporting, such as dispensing with the 
requirement to submit duplicates. Originally, for each financial transaction reporting agents were 
required to provide data about both the securities/fi nancial derivatives leg and the payment leg. The 
draft regulation specifies that although in certain cases the payment leg will no longer be reported, 
the securities/financial derivatives leg still needs to be reported. 
6. As regards foreign direct investment, the draft regulation contains a requirement to provide, at the 
time of first submission of data, a reason why reporting is required.  This brings the reporting of 
foreign direct investment into line with the data requirements of the relevant international 
organisations, (the Organisati on for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the 
International Monetary Fund (IMF)), in particul ar the OECD Benchmark Definition of Foreign 
Direct Investment4. 
7. Assessment of the draft regulation  
The ECB welcomes the draft regulation as it brings  German reporting requirements into line with 
international statistical standards. This will fu rther enhance the international comparability of 
German statistics and may reduce asymmetries betw een the statistics of one Member State and 
another in relation to the same cross-border transact ion, with a concomitantly positive effect on the 
quality of euro area statistics. The ECB also sees the draft regulation as an important step towards 
streamlining the German system of collecting data on cross-border transactions. 
8. This opinion will be published on the ECB’s website.   Done at Frankfurt am Main, 21 October 2005. 
 
[ signed ] 
 
The President of the ECB 
Jean-Claude TRICHET 
                                                     
 
4  Third edition, 1996; available on the OECD’s website (www.oecd.org).