[author: Heidi Wardle]

The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (“ECON“) published a report on August 29, (a draft of which it published in April) on relationships between the EU and third countries concerning financial services regulation and supervision. The report included recommendations for a European Parliament resolution, including:

• Third countries must keep the ESAs (that is, ESMA, EIOPA and the EBA) informed of any national regulatory developments through the EU’s future equivalence framework and the equivalence decision should require good regulatory and supervisory co-operation.
• The European Commission should provide a clear framework for the application of equivalence procedures that introduces a standardized process for the determination of equivalence.
• The Commission should review the effectiveness of the current equivalence regime and publish its findings together with any proposals for improvement.
• The Commission should report annually to the European Parliament on all decisions on equivalence and explain the rationale for those decisions.
• The ESAs should have the capacity and powers to collect, collate and analyze data to enable them to monitor third country supervisory and regulatory frameworks.

We note the draft report included a call for a financial services chapter as part of any future EU-US trade agreement, but this was not included in the final version.