The Commission welcomes the swift political agreement reached yesterday between the European Parliament and EU Member States on the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The regulation, agreed in slightly more than a year after it was proposed, is among the first initiatives of its kind to comprehensively regulate the gatekeeper power of the largest digital companies. Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton (see photo) said: “This agreement seals the economic leg of our ambitious reorganisation of our digital space in the EU internal market. We will quickly work on designating gatekeepers based on objective criteria. Within 6 months of being designated, they will have to comply with their new obligations. Through effective enforcement, the new rules will bring increased contestability and fairer conditions for consumers and business users, which will allow for more innovation and choice in the market. We are serious about this common endeavour: no company in the world can turn a blind eye to the prospect of a fine of up to 20% of their global turnover if they repeatedly break the rules.”
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The Financial Stability Board (FSB), the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements, and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) have today published a report analysing existing financial resources and tools for central counterparty (CCP) recovery and resolution, which confirmed the need for further work on CCP financial resources. In November 2020, the Chairs of the FSB, CPMI, IOSCO and of the FSB’s Resolution Steering Group publicly committed to collaborate on and conduct further work on CCP financial resources in recovery and resolution. This report presents the results of the evidence gathering and analysis on existing financial resources and tools for CCP recovery and resolution carried out in 2021. Continue reading…

The European Commission’s ‘Freeze and Seize’ Task Force, set up to ensure EU-level coordination to implement sanctions against listed Russian and Belarussian oligarchs, has now stepped up its action at international level. It will work alongside the newly established ‘Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO)’ Task Force, under which the EU operates together with the G7 countries Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Australia. Cooperation between the European ‘Freeze and Seize’ Task Force and the international ‘REPO’ Task Force is essential to guarantee the efficiency of the sanctions taken on both sides of the Atlantic. The Commission is committed to work closely and coordinate with its partners to ensure effective cooperation on a global level. Continue reading…

The European Compliance Center together with media partner Risk & Compliance Platform Europe, is pleased to present the launch of a new initiative, the Compliance Cafe. The Compliance Cafe is a series of monthly webinars with outstanding compliance professionals. The aim of these online sessions is to encourage interaction between compliance professionals from different countries to discuss current risk and compliance topics, such as money laundering and de-risking. The first Compliance Cafe webinar was held on January 26, 2022, on the topic of the peculiarities of the transnational fight against illicit money flows – regulations, institutions, and effectiveness. Continue reading…

During an action day, 11 suspects were arrested in Romania, Belgium and Austria, accused of stealing at least EUR 420 000 using cloned fuel cards in Belgium. In Romania, a total of 115 law enforcement officers from different units were deployed, including those specialising in combating organised crime. Eurojust supported the investigation led by Belgian authorities. The perpetrators allegedly used various skimming techniques to obtain the electronic data contained on the magnetic stripe of the original fuel cards and their PIN codes. With these electronic data, they cloned fuel cards that, with the use of the PIN code, allowed them to buy fuel and to upload money to the Belgian road-toll-reporting device without the intention of ever paying these amounts. Continue reading…

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, has on March 10th published its peer review report on the supervision of cross-border activities of investment firms. With this peer review, ESMA is also issuing Article 16 recommendations to the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the first time ESMA has issued such recommendations to a National Competent Authority (NCA). ESMA identifies in the peer review the need for home NCAs to significantly improve their approach in the authorisation, ongoing supervision and enforcement work, relating to investment firm’s cross border activities. This includes calibrating their supervisory work to the nature, scale and complexity of those firms’ cross-border activities and the risks they pose. Continue reading…

The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether an agreement between Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) for online display advertising services may have breached EU competition rules. Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: ”Many publishers rely on online display advertising to fund online content for consumers. Via the so-called “Jedi Blue” agreement between Google and Meta, a competing technology to Google’s Open Bidding may have been targeted with the aim to weaken it and exclude it from the market for displaying ads on publisher websites and apps. If confirmed by our investigation, this would restrict and distort competition in the already concentrated ad tech market, to the detriment of rival ad serving technologies, publishers and ultimately consumers.”
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Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, made a statement on the 10th of March 2022 with regards to the Ukraine-Russia War. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a watershed for Europe. The Governing Council expresses its full support to the people of Ukraine. We will ensure smooth liquidity conditions and implement the sanctions decided by the European Union and European governments. We will take whatever action is needed to fulfil the ECB’s mandate to pursue price stability and to safeguard financial stability. Continue reading…

On 16 December 2020, the Parliament and the Council adopted a regulation 1 which establishes a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget in the case of breaches of the principles of the rule of law in a Member State. In order to attain that objective, the regulation allows the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, to adopt protective measures such as the suspension of payments to be made from the Union budget or the suspension of the approval of one or more programmes to be paid from that budget. 2 Continue reading…

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has published a discussion paper on February 22nd on debt overhang issues of non-financial corporates in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This follows the FSB’s report on COVID-19 support measures, published in April 2021, which noted the unprecedented level of debt of non-financial companies, resulting largely from massive credit provision by the public sector (both directly and through loan guarantees) during the pandemic. The report identified debt overhang as a significant risk that could arise from prolonged policy support measures. Continue reading…