BERLIN, February 17 (Reuters) – France and Germany urged the European Commission to present an ambitious “package to simplify financial services” to make the European Union’s rules easier to navigate and less burdensome for businesses, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
In the letter sent on Friday to the EU’s Commissioner for Financial Services, Maria Luis Albuquerque, the German Finance Minister, Lars Klingbeil, and his French counterpart, Roland Lescure, identify several areas where EU legislation on financial services can be simplified while ensuring financial stability.
“We need a dedicated and comprehensive European-level package to simplify financial services that reviews the entire regulatory framework of the European financial market, ensuring coherence and effective enforcement,” the letter states.
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Relatively weak growth rates in Europe have long concerned public authorities and businesses, while efforts to integrate the region’s disparate banking sectors have faced difficulties.
Klingbeil said on Monday, ahead of a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels, that the EU is at a turning point where countries should not hide behind national interests, but accelerate progress to bolster the EU’s influence and sovereignty.
“This is a very European moment,” Klingbeil said.
The German and French ministers argue that selective adjustments to future legislation are not enough and that the EU should also simplify the rules already in force, with a view to strengthening the single market for financial services and improving the global competitiveness of European institutions.
In the United States, President Donald Trump is pressuring regulators to cut red tape—potentially giving Wall Street giants even more power—and regulators in the United Kingdom are also loosening some rules.
Among the specific areas highlighted, the letter calls for the simplification of reporting, so that a financial market transaction would need to be reported only once, based on established market practices, rather than additional regulation, revoking unused delegated powers and simplifying rules for reporting cyber incidents.
