2004/9/EC: Commission Decision of 5 November 2003 establishing the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Committee (Text with EEA relevance)

Commission Decision
of 5 November 2003
establishing the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Committee
(Text with EEA relevance)
(2004/9/EC)
THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,
Whereas:
(1) In June 2001, the Commission adopted Decisions 2001/527/EC(1) and 2001/528/EC(2) setting up the Committee of European Securities Regulators and the European Securities Committee respectively.
(2) In its Resolutions of 5 February and 21 November 2002, the European Parliament endorsed the four-level approach advocated in the Final Report of the Committee of Wise Men on the regulation of European securities markets and called for certain aspects of that approach to be extended to the banking and insurance sectors subject to a clear Council commitment to reform to guarantee a proper institutional balance.
(3) On 3 December 2002, the Council invited the Commission to implement such arrangements in the fields of banking and insurance and occupational pensions and to establish as soon as possible new committees in an advisory capacity in relation to those fields.
(4) Council Directive 91/675/EEC of 19 December 1991 setting up an Insurance Committee(3) established a committee to advise the Commission in the development of legislation in the insurance field.
(5) The Commission has proposed a Directive modifying, inter alia, Directive 91/675/EEC, First Council Directive 73/239/EEC of 24 July 1973 on the coordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to the taking-up and pursuit of the business of direct insurance other than life assurance(4) as amended, Directive 2002/83/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 November 2002 concerning life assurance(5), and Directive 2002/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2002 on the supplementary supervision of credit institutions, insurance undertakings and investment firms in a financial conglomerate and amending Council Directives 73/239/EEC, 79/267/EEC, 92/49/EEC, 92/96/EEC, 93/6/EEC and 93/22/EEC, and Directives 98/78/EC and 2000/12/EC of the European Parliament and the Council(6), to delete the advisory functions of the Insurance Committee.
(6) Such an amendment requires the corresponding and simultaneous creation of a new advisory group to advise the Commission as regards the development of Community legislation in the insurance and occupational pensions fields, hereafter called the "European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Committee".
(7) To ensure this, this Decision should only come into being at the same time as any Directive repealing the purely advisory functions of the Insurance Committee.
(8) The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Committee should be competent to examine any question relating to the application of Community provisions concerning the fields of insurance and occupational pensions, and, in particular, should advise the Commission on new proposals for new legislation in those fields which the Commission intends to present to the European Parliament and the Council; however in the occupational pensions field, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Committee should not address labour and social law aspects such as the organisation of occupational regimes, in particular compulsory membership and the results of collective bargaining agreements,