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27 March 2012

Barnier: Making financial regulation serve society through civil society and consumer participation


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Barnier presented the steps being taken in order to involve civil society better in the new financial regulation. Barnier stressed that 2012 will be full of initiatives that will have a strong impact on consumers of financial services.


  1. "Firstly, we have reduced the number of groups. There are currently seven groups, two of which are exclusively made up of representatives of the least powerful stakeholders:
    1. the financial services user group for consumers;
    2. and the financial services employees' group (Uni-Europa) for trade unions.
  2. As regards composition, industry experts now only account for 35 per cent of the total number of group members compared with consumer representatives, trade unions, SMEs and academia which account for 43 per cent.
  3. In addition to this reform, we have also started discussions regarding the adoption of a charter of principles which should govern the composition of all future expert groups, including in non-financial fields. This charter will be published in the coming weeks.
  4. In order to increase transparency, a webpage has been especially designed for DG Internal Market's website to centralise all the information on the groups, including their mandates and composition.
  5. Lastly, the Council and the European Parliament have given us a budget of €1.25 million to launch the pilot project for the funding of a European financial expertise centre which would directly benefit consumers and non-industry stakeholders.

These funds will be allocated to beneficiaries selected by DG Internal Market using a call for proposals. They will make it possible to tackle the problem of lack of analytical capacity and skilled human resources faced by representatives of consumers, small investors and other non-industry stakeholders. We want to help these players recruit experts and spend the time needed to get their message across to European co-legislators and the general public.

The applications received, including from Finance Watch, are being examined. I hope this pilot project will be launched in the near future.”

Full speech



© European Parliament


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