The interconnection of business registers Judit Fischer – DG Internal Market and Services Budapest, 14 June 2010 1
Overview v Why is the Commission dealing with the interconnection of business registers (BR)? v Green paper and progress report v Outcome of the public consultation v What's next? 2
Why? v Business registers play an essential role in ensuring market transparency v Credible business information v helps to protect consumers, creditors, other business partners against business risk v facilitates access to justice v Access to business information should be the same, no matter where the company is registered 3
Why now? v Political reason - the financial crisis highlighted the importance of transparency v Technical precondition – electronic business registers v Completion of the Single Market: v more and more cross-border business activity v cross-border groups v cross-border mergers, seat transfers, branch registrations 4
Green paper and progress report v November 2009 – adoption by the Commission v The progress report presented v the legal background v the European Business Register (EBR) v the BRITE project (Do. R, REID, CNI, BDS) v the Internal Market Information System (IMI) v the e-Justice project (in particular, the portal) v The green paper complemented it with policy options 5
Issues in the green paper v Cross-border access to information v EBR is a voluntary network v Member States have legal problems with membership v quality of data transmitted through the network is uneven v no single access point v Cross-border cooperation between BRs v legal obligation in EU directives for BRs to cooperate v no pre-established channels of communication in relation to the cross-border mergers directive, SE and SCE regulations v no cross-border cooperation in relation to branch disclosure v Public consultation until end January 2010 6
Responses to the consultation 1 v 69 replies from 22 countries (21 Member States) 7
Responses to the consultation 2 v 17 national governments and many BRs + business organisations companies, lawyer associations 8
Cross-border access to information v Positive reaction - 94 % in favour of an improved network in which all Member States take part v support for legislative changes, e. g. amendment to the 1 st CLD v governance agreement v Quality of data has to be improved, business information has to be v updated, v reliable, v standardised and v available in the relevant language v Single access point 9
Cross-border cooperation of BRs v On cross-border mergers, seat transfers: v 65 % in favour of an automated solution (BRITE) v 24 % in favour of tool mix v 11 % in favour of a manual solution (IMI) v On branches: v 75 % expressed view v 96 % of those: need for action (automated exchange) v Strong support for legislative changes (amendment to the 11 th CLD) 10
Other EU institutions v Council Conclusions adopted on 25 May 2010 v political support v wish to build on results already achieved v discussion already indicated important differences in opinions (esp. EBR, reliability of data) v European Parliament working on a draft report v European Economic and Social Committee - draft opinion v Committee of Regions - draft opinion 11
Next steps – Impact assessment 1 v Mandatory before any legislative proposal v economic justification of any EU action v cost-benefit analysis v Issues to be addressed: v Difficulties of information exchange between BRs v Problems with data quality v Differences in legal value of registered business information v Not enough information in BRs on cross-border relations (e. g. branches, group structures) v Access to business information in too few languages 12
Impact assessment 2 v These deficiencies result in: v slower cross-border business operations v more risk in business v less access to justice v administrative burden on companies v Objective: to prove that v the benefits of solving these problems exceed the costs of the necessary investment and v they cannot be solved without EU action v Different policy options to be examined 13
Impact assessment 3 v ICT impact assessment v new possibility, in parallel to the other impact assessment v different technological solutions could be examined v determine the "missing links" v Specific issue: unique company identifier (e. g. REID) has strong support from Eurostat, national statistical offices 14
Timeline v July 2010 – finish the impact assessment v September 2010 – impact assessment board v if approved, legislative proposals at the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011 15
Governance agreement v Technical details to be developed by experts v Approval by the governments of the Member States v A solution needs to be found that v is workable, v takes into account the concerns of every Member State, v shows a clear way forward and v builds on a compromise. 16
Further information at: http: //ec. europa. eu/internal_market/company/business _registers/index_en. htm Contact: judit. fischer@ec. europa. eu 17
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