FISCO Meets To Discuss Cross-Border Clearing And Settlement In EU

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

19 April 2005

The European Commission’s Clearing and Settlement Fiscal Compliance (FISCO) group held its first meeting in Brussels on Friday.

The group, which is chaired by the EC, aims to advise on the removal of fiscal compliance barriers to the clearing and settlement of cross-border securities transactions within the EU, and is composed of 15 high-level experts, mainly from private bodies.

Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announced that:

"The FISCO Group will have an important role to play in helping to tackle the fiscal barriers. This is an area that was highlighted by the group of financial experts chaired by Alberto Giovannini, as one of the obstacles to more efficient pan-European cross border clearing and settlement in securities. This is important in the context of deepening financial market integration.”

In a statement released last week, the EC explained that the development of clearing and settlement systems has predominantly taken place on a national level, as cross-border trading activity has been limited.

This means, therefore, that cross-border clearing and settlement in the EU is still much more costly and complex than within a single Member State or in the United States, to the detriment of the EU's financial markets.

The FISCO group was established to find ways to achieve an integrated, safe and efficient clearing and settlement environment for securities trading in the EU, based on a level playing field for the different providers of services. The body pledged to look at alternative ways for Member States to secure their tax receipts, while permitting all financial institutions across the European Union to compete on an equal footing.

It will also produce a study assessing whether national fiscal compliance procedures could be more closely aligned and whether the multiplicity of rules which raise the cost of cross-border settlement could be eliminated or substantially reduced, according to the EC statement.

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