transparency of results of consultation September 14, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consultation , comments closedThe EU Commission today published results of consultations on out of court resolution of disputes about financial services and basic bank accounts. The Commission has produced summary documents reflecting the results of the consultation. These documents show that the Commission received 97 responses to the basic bank accounts consultation and 68 responses to the ADR consultation. The basic bank accounts summary document reveals a range of views about the issues among respondents. For example, the document suggests that industry and public authorities have much more faith than consumers and users of financial services and civil society organisations in the effectiveness of voluntary codes of conduct. Not a very surprising result. And although there’s a lot of academic support for self-regulation, the academic organisations and think tanks which responded to this consultation did not tend to think that voluntary codes were effective either.
iosco audit firm ownership consultation September 11, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consultation , comments closedBeginning this week and until December IOSCO is seeking comments on the idea of non-professional ownership structures for audit firms. Although IOSCO doesn’t always publish the full text of responses to its consultations this is one of the times where it proposes to do so. There are other consultations on auditor communications and on transparency and responses to these documents are also to be published.
tracking consultations August 24, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consultation , comments closedIt would be easier to track consultations if the lists Governments maintain were kept current. The UK’s directgov website (“public services all in one place”) has a page dedicated to a list of government consultation websites. But whereas the link to the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform works – when they made the change to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills they put the new name on the top of the old web page, other links don’t work so well. So clicking on the Department for Constitutional Affairs takes you to a page that states that as of 2007 the responsibilities have been transferred to the Ministry of Justice. You have to click again to get to the new page. But the maintenance of the inaccurate list at directgov bothers me. People who know what they are looking for are likely to go straight to the Ministry of Justice website, but others who aren’t sure where to look may get put off by the outdated departmental designations and the need for extra clicking (and this from the successors to the people who promised joined-up government!).
the eu, consultation and the crisis August 10, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consultation , comments closedMeasures which are designed to respond to the financial crisis have been proposed in ways that short-circuit normal processes. The EU’s consultation on proposals to amend capital requirements, for example, has a consultation period of less than eight weeks because:
These amendments form part of the ongoing response of the European Union to the financial crisis and a proposal is scheduled for adoption by the Commission in October. A shorter consultation period is necessary to meet that timetable.
But the political process sometimes slows down the adoption of measures prompted by crisis. A Credit Ratings Regulation, for example, was proposed in November last year but it has not yet been adopted. The consultation for that measure, which began in July 2008 was also truncated:
It was not possible for Commission services to start the consultation period earlier given the fact that the advice of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) and the report of European Securities Markets Expert group (ESME) were delivered only in May and June this year respectively. These contributions had been prepared on the request of the Commission and offered the necessary basis for the Commission services’ work in this area. Moreover, a substantial amount of time in the preparatory phase has been devoted to eventually unsuccessful attempts to create a self-regulatory solution for the CRA industry.
Neither is it possible to extend the consultation period later in September: in view of the forthcoming elections, the European Parliament has agreed with the European Commission to accept the Commission proposals to be dealt in co-decision only by October 2008 at the latest. This implies that the Commission services will need to launch and finalise an Interservice Consultation in September 2008 in order to meet this deadline. Commission services will compensate the short consultation period by individually encouraging important stakeholders (including regulators, Member States and the CRAs) to participate in the public consultation.
It would be nice to think that the later delays redress some of the defects of the initial consultation, but I’m not so sanguine. Commentators suggest that the Commission may be trying to influence the Basel capital review process by moving quickly.