On 25 September 2018, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) voted to adopt the European Commission’s (the Commission’s) proposal for a Regulation on the prudential supervision of investment firms, and a Directive on the prudential supervision of investment firms – which amends the CRD IV Directive and the MiFID II Directive (the Proposals).
In voting on the Proposals, MEPs:
- agreed with the Commission proposal saying that smaller non-systemic investment firms should be subject to tailor made rules on supervision and capital requirements;
- backed the Commission’s proposal that when the average of monthly total assets, calculated over a period of twelve consecutive months, exceeds EUR 30 billion – an investment firm should be subject to the current capital requirements rules for banks;
- extended the period during which thresholds must be exceeded before moving from a non-systemic to a systemic player;
- tightened the equivalence rules for the third country investment companies by, on top of other requirements, only enabling these firms to provide services of systemic importance to the EU after a detailed assessment by the Commission paired with a regulatory monitoring by ESMA; and
- introduced a requirement that the same or similar type of jobs will be equally remunerated regardless of gender, in addition to new disclosure requirements on investment policy.
Following the adoption of the draft report of the Proposals, ECON has announced it is ready to enter trialogue discussions once the Council of the EU has reached a common stance.
