CESR verwelkomt nieuwe leden EU

CESR verwelkomt nieuwe leden van de toegetreden Europese Unie lidstaten

Het betreft de toezichthouders uit de volgende landen: Cyprus, Tsjechië, Estland, Hongarije, Letland, Litouwen, Malta, Polen, Slowakije en Slovenië.

Originele persbericht:

CESR welcomes new members from the ten EU Accession Countries

CESR is pleased to announce that the following ten Authorities have now joined CESR as full members, these include: the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the Czech Securities Commission, the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority, the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority, the Latvian Financial and Capital Market Commission, the Lithuanian Securities Commission, the Malta Financial Services Authority, the Polish Securities Exchange Commission, the Slovakian Financial Market Authority and the Slovenian Securities Market Agency.

The accession countries have faced the twin challenge of implementing Europe's existing financial services legislation (commonly referred to as the acquis communitaire), whilst also keeping abreast of the major changes currently being implemented in the field of financial services regulation following the ambitious programme of legislative initiatives launched under the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP), adopted by the European Commission on 11 May 1999. The decision therefore to join for a period as observers, prior to full CESR membership, has enabled most of these authorities to ease this transition given the challenging nature of this moving target.

Equally, CESR members have been keen to have the accession countries party to the development of CESR's advice on EU legislation, submitted to the European Commission, and, the development of CESR's own regulatory standards to ensure European investors can enjoy comparable levels of protection across the European Union no matter where the service provider in the European Economic Area, is based.

The real assessment of consistent implementation not only in accession countries, but across the EU, can only be assessed effectively once the legislative measures of the FSAP will come into effect. Nevertheless, the European Commission has undertaken a number of assessments on the state of preparedness for EU Membership amongst the accession countries, the last of which can be found in the European Commission's 'Comprehensive monitoring report' of 2003.  Existing CESR members will therefore be keen to help their fellow regulators in strengthening the independence and efficiency of the financial supervisory authorities, which is a key requirement for safeguarding confidence in the EU's integrated financial market.

Finally, the transition today to full CESR membership reflects the accession of these countries to the European Union and is in line with the European Commission's Decision of 6 June 2001 (Article 3) which established the Committee of European Securities Regulators and indicated that 'each Member State shall designate a high level representative from its competent authority to participate in the meetings of the Committee'.