1 The interconnection of business registers Judit Fischer – DG Internal Market and Services Budapest, 14 June 2010

2 Overview Why is the Commission dealing with the interconnection of business registers (BR)? Green paper and progress report Outcome of the public consultation What's next?

3 Why? Business registers play an essential role in ensuring market transparency Credible business information helps to protect consumers, creditors, other business partners against business risk facilitates access to justice Access to business information should be the same, no matter where the company is registered

4 Why now? Political reason - the financial crisis highlighted the importance of transparency Technical precondition – electronic business registers Completion of the Single Market: more and more cross-border business activity cross-border groups cross-border mergers, seat transfers, branch registrations

5 Green paper and progress report November 2009 – adoption by the Commission The progress report presented the legal background the European Business Register (EBR) the BRITE project (DoR, REID, CNI, BDS) the Internal Market Information System (IMI) the e-Justice project (in particular, the portal) The green paper complemented it with policy options

6 Issues in the green paper Cross-border access to information EBR is a voluntary network Member States have legal problems with membership quality of data transmitted through the network is uneven no single access point Cross-border cooperation between BRs legal obligation in EU directives for BRs to cooperate no pre-established channels of communication in relation to the cross-border mergers directive, SE and SCE regulations no cross-border cooperation in relation to branch disclosure Public consultation until end January 2010

7 Responses to the consultation 1 69 replies from 22 countries (21 Member States)

8 Responses to the consultation 2 17 national governments and many BRs + business organisations companies, lawyer associations

9 Cross-border access to information Positive reaction - 94 % in favour of an improved network in which all Member States take part support for legislative changes, e.g. amendment to the 1 st CLD governance agreement Quality of data has to be improved, business information has to be updated, reliable, standardised and available in the relevant language Single access point

10 Cross-border cooperation of BRs On cross-border mergers, seat transfers: 65 % in favour of an automated solution (BRITE) 24 % in favour of tool mix 11 % in favour of a manual solution (IMI) On branches: 75 % expressed view 96 % of those: need for action (automated exchange) Strong support for legislative changes (amendment to the 11 th CLD)

11 Other EU institutions Council Conclusions adopted on 25 May 2010 political support wish to build on results already achieved discussion already indicated important differences in opinions (esp. EBR, reliability of data) European Parliament working on a draft report European Economic and Social Committee - draft opinion Committee of Regions - draft opinion

12 Next steps – Impact assessment 1 Mandatory before any legislative proposal economic justification of any EU action cost-benefit analysis Issues to be addressed: Difficulties of information exchange between BRs Problems with data quality Differences in legal value of registered business information Not enough information in BRs on cross-border relations (e.g. branches, group structures) Access to business information in too few languages

13 Impact assessment 2 These deficiencies result in: slower cross-border business operations more risk in business less access to justice administrative burden on companies Objective: to prove that the benefits of solving these problems exceed the costs of the necessary investment and they cannot be solved without EU action Different policy options to be examined

14 Impact assessment 3 ICT impact assessment new possibility, in parallel to the other impact assessment different technological solutions could be examined determine the "missing links" Specific issue: unique company identifier (e.g. REID) has strong support from Eurostat, national statistical offices

15 Timeline July 2010 – finish the impact assessment September 2010 – impact assessment board if approved, legislative proposals at the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011

16 Governance agreement Technical details to be developed by experts Approval by the governments of the Member States A solution needs to be found that is workable, takes into account the concerns of every Member State, shows a clear way forward and builds on a compromise.

17 Further information at: _registers/index_en.htm Contact: