Commission to announce Communication on financial services and e-commerce
The European Commission will bring forward a Communication on financial services and e-commerce later this year, it was announced at a meeting of representatives of EU finance ministers chaired by Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein. To help define the key issues to be covered in the directive, the financial services policy group, meeting on 11 May in Brussels, discussed the impact of e-commerce related directives in the financial services area. Debate focused around two main topics - the need to ensure a coherent legislative framework and the measures needed to protect consumers and build trust, including non-legislative measures. The group agreed that the most pressing issue is the need to ensure legal coherence between the e-commerce directive and existing financial services legislation. In particular the legal situation in the areas of advertising and marketing and applicable contract law for consumer contracts needs to be addressed. The importance of finding technology neutral solutions was stressed, as well as coherence between on and offline traffic.