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Financial information is vital for the investigation of serious crime and for freezing the proceeds of crime, but EU investigators often lack the tools for effective investigation, especially when dealing with cross-border crime. The new revised directive – adopted in May 2024 – will give law enforcement authorities the same level of access afforded to financial intelligence units under the new anti-money laundering directive. It will include crypto-asset service providers and financial and credit ...

Directive 2005/44/EC on harmonised river information services (RIS) on inland waterways ('RIS Directive') establishes rules on RIS to ensure the safety, efficiency and environmental protection of inland waterways in the EU. On 26 January 2024, the European Commission put forward a proposal to amend the RIS Directive with a view to addressing certain shortcomings. The amending directive should provide better-quality information, reduce efforts to collect basic information, reduce the need to re-register ...

Instant payments in euro

At a Glance 31-01-2024

To ensure affordable, secure instant payments in euro that conform to rules on sanctions and financial crime, the European Commission proposed a regulation in October 2022. The new rules would mean citizens and businesses would pay standard transfer prices for instant money transfers. A provisional political agreement reached between the ºÏ·¨²©²ÊÍøÕ¾ and Council is scheduled for vote during the February I plenary session.

The IA underpins the proposal for the second revision of the Payment Services Directive with relevant internal and external expertise. Despite some weaknesses in the definition of objectives, it follows a clear intervention logic, based on four problem areas. To tackle these, 16 options and combinations of options are assessed, 12 of which are selected for the final package of preferred options. While the analysis is clear and logical overall, the details of the measures under the options and of ...

Payment services enable digital payments through direct debits, credit transfers or payments with cards or similar devices. Within the EU, these are regulated through the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which sets rules for payment services, their providers and consumer protection. Announced in September 2021 under the digital finance strategy and the retail payments strategy, the Commission published two proposals on the revision of PSD2 on 28 June 2023 as part of the financial data access ...

Cross-border payments are crucial for the integration of the EU economy, and play an important role in ensuring that citizens and enterprises from all EU Member States enjoy the same rights offered by the single market. Since the introduction of the euro, the EU has launched various initiatives to reduce the cost of cross-border transactions, among them a set of single euro payments area (SEPA) standards, regulations on cross-border payments, and the Payment Services Directives. Nevertheless, cross-border ...

While the overall argument in favour of cheaper cross-border payments across the euro and non-euro Member States appears sensible, this impact assessment could have been stronger in terms of discussing the specifics of the financial infrastructure in non-euro Member States and the shortcomings of the cross-border payments market related to these specifics. A more detailed comparison of options including the economic impacts (particularly as related to SMEs) would have been helpful, as would be a ...

The monthly scrutiny slot at the ECON meeting of 21 November 2017 focued on the Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) specifying the requirements on strong customer authentication and common and secure communication under PSD2 which the Commission is about to adopt. These RTS have been previously discussed in ECON scrutiny slots and are the most sensitive PSD2 level-2 measure on which the industry has voiced concerns. The end of the session was dedicated to the RTS on separation of payment card schemes ...

The imbalances within the Eurosystem’s Target 2 payment system are an indication that financial markets are not fully integrated. However, the increase in these imbalances in the wake of the large asset purchases (often called QE, for quantitative easing) that started in early 2015, should not be a particular cause for concern. The imbalances had declined until the start of QE, accompanied by a reduction in risk premia. QE was associated with a further reduction in financial stress. There is thus ...

LAccording to the ECB, the recent rise in TARGET 2 balances could be seen as the result of the decentralised implementation of the extended asset purchase programme (APP). The programme entails cross-border payments by the purchasing NCBs, with around 50% of involved counterparties resident outside the euro area, including the UK. These counterparties access the TARGET system via a limited number of financial centres, particularly Germany and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands. According to the ...