The Dutch Minister of Finance (Minister van Financiën) has published the legislative letters from the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the AFM) and the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank, the DNB). The AFM and the DNB annually send legislative letters to the Minister of Finance in which they set out relevant European and national developments for the financial sector and discuss desired legislative changes to address bottlenecks in legislation, with the aim to making their supervision more effective.

The AFM calls for wider powers to publish warnings and reports concerning entities which do not comply with the Act on Financial Supervision (Wet op het financieel toezicht) or the underlying decrees and regulations. The DNB points out the influence of European legislation on its supervisory tasks and the importance of coherent implementation of these rules, in combination with the strengthening of supervisory tasks at a national level. Both the AFM and the DNB call for greater transparency, in particular in the context of financial reporting by supervised undertakings.

The Minister of Finance has responded positively to the majority of the points raised by the AFM and the DNB and indicated that he intends to address these points in future legislation.

View the AFM legislative letter 2015, 2 July 2015.

View the DNB legislative letter 2015, 2 July 2015.

View the Minster of Finance’s response to the legislative letters, 2 July 2015.