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The Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament (ECON) voted yesterday on the Regulation for a Key Information Document for investment products (formerly known as “PRIPs”). EuroFinUse praises the European Parliament for voting for more consistency in summary information for investors, but is quite concerned that a majority of the critical long term and

On October 18, EuroFinUse and the Austrian Shareholder Association (IVA) held an international conference on “The Financial Repression of Savers and Investors”, in Vienna. International authorities from the private and public sectors discussed the alleged inevitability of Financial Repression and proposed solutions to face this issue. The event held at the Vienna Insurance Group was

Yesterday EuroFinUse, WWF and VoteWatch Europe were the last remaining candidates standing at the coveted European Public Affairs Awards, eagerly awaiting the announcement of the winner of the “NGO of The Year” category. The EPA awards single out organisations for excellence in their respective sector, while aiming to encourage best practice in the European public affairs

The European Federation of Financial Services Users releases its research report on the real return of pension savings. This research confirms, broadens and deepens the OECD 2012 Pensions Reportconclusions which revealed negative real returns on average for pension funds.  Our research adds other pension savings than pension funds, includes France (not covered by the OECD

EuroFinUse invites you to the Conference on the BETTER FINANCE MANIFESTO which will take place at the European Parliament on March 28. Whereas there are many challenges ahead, few are as acute as dealing with the fallout of the financial crisis. In order to shore up the real economy, protect savers and investors, concentrate on long term

On 26 March, EuroFinUse, the only organisation dedicated to defend the rights of European financial services users, organised a high-level conference on the audit reform, hosted by British MEP Sajjad Karim, to discuss the proposals linked to audit tenure, non-audit services policy, quality, transparency, pricing as well as those targeting the role of audit committees

At the EuroFinUse General Assembly, on 25 March 2013, Jean Berthon was elected as President to head the one and only organization dedicated to defend the rights of financial users. On January 1st 2013, Euroshareholders and EuroFinUse – the two European organizations representing individual shareholders, investors, savers and other financial services users – merged to

EuroFinUse praises the Eurogroup statement from late Monday in favor of fully guaranteeing deposits below EUR 100,000. Moreover, we believe bank depositors should not pay for the excesses of the banking industry and or governments. Therefore, depositors should be protected from bearing the bulk of the Cypriot rescue package. Full Press Release

EuroFinuse, the European Federation of Financial Services Users, is closely following the debate onthe “UCITS V Directive” that is currently focusing on depositories’ liabilities and asset managers’remuneration.These are two major issues that have to be tackled by EU institutions, as they were exposed as theweakest part of the UCITS framework during the financial crisis. Performance

EuroFinUse is very pleased that MEP Pervenche Beres’ amendments on PRIPs match our demands in relation to the inclusion of shares and bonds and other bank savings products, life insurance products as well as the disclosure of inducements paid by the provider to the seller. Press Release

The document serves as BETTER FINANCE response to selected questions of ESMA’s discussion paper on the implications of digitalisation for investor protection under MiFID II. The document “Discussion Paper on MiFID II investor protection topics linked to digitalisation” provided by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) focuses on various aspects of digitalisation in the

BETTER FINANCE expresses concern over Deutsche Bank’s disclosure of missing Russian shares. The bank recently revealed a shortfall in the shares underlying depositary receipts (DRs), further increasing the challenges for European investors seeking to recover their investments in Russian listed companies, especially individual non-professional ones. DRs are used in international stock trading as a means

BETTER FINANCE supports the recent proposal put forth by the European Commission, aimed at simplifying the reimbursement of cross-border withholding taxes. Guillaume Prache, the Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, expresses cautious optimism and states, “This proposal, which was swiftly introduced following a joint study conducted by BETTER FINANCE and DSW – Germany’s leading association for

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Definitions are constantly evolving around the key concepts of sustainability but jurisdictions, regulators, and international organisations around the globe agree on the common elements of each of the below.

BETTER FINANCE’s answer to the European Commission (EC) consultation on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings and sustainability factors in credit ratings aims to inform on concerns about the functioning of the ESG ranking market developed by commercial data providers. This agenda pertains to the renewed sustainable finance strategy adopted in July 2021 by the

AEMEC, one of the Spanish member organisations of BETTER FINANCE, expresses concerns about the negative impact on individual shareholders of Spanish electricity companies of new tax measures targetting those companies currently being considered by the Spanish authorities. Please read the full press release in Spanish here. The English version can be found here.

BETTER FINANCE welcomes the update of the non-binding guidelines on non-financial reporting as a crucial step toward achieving the Paris agreement and the Sustainable Development goals by reorienting capital flows to support a long-term sustainable and just economy. However, it also expresses some doubts about the effectiveness of these requirements due to their not binding nature

In last week’s extensive article entitled Pressures on Slovenia, Which Are Not Discussed Publicly (www.delo.si/novice/slovenija/pritiski-na-slovenijo-o-katerih-se-na-glas-ne-govori-81803.html), the leading newspaper (Delo) disclosed the continuous and ever greater pressures on Slovenia to withdraw from the investigation of these acts, despite reasonable grounds for suspecting that in the fall of 2013 the then heads of the Bank of Slovenia

In a letter addressed to the German Federal Minister of Economy and Energy, the Foundation expresses its disappointment regarding the absence of an answer to the letter sent to the Federal Minister in April 2017.  As a reminder, the Stichting Volkswagen Investors Claim represents German and international investors (shareholders and bondholders of VW), who in

U.S. developments Over the last months, it has been reported that Volkswagen reached a 15 billion dollar settlement with the authorities, the consumers and the car dealers in the United States. Contrary to these developments, Volkswagen has raised a motion to dismiss the ADR investor case. The judge will hear this motion during a trial

The European Commission has issued the Delegated Act on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to enhance transparency in sustainability reporting by companies. However, it faces criticism for weakening key aspects of the initial proposal by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) and neglecting vital concerns. Critics

BETTER FINANCE calls for restricting “dark” capital market venues to REAL Large-in-scale (LIS) trades, i.e., of more than €100k each, to really prevent them from dealing with “retail” orders. Current Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) proposals “surreal” and don’t respond to citizens’ questions. A real-time pre-trade Consolidated Tape (CT) of equity order books will put

On 20 September 2017 the European Commission (EC) announced its proposal to improve the supervision of European financial services as well as its revision of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs). The prospect of such a key reform prompted BETTER FINANCE and other European user-side NGOs to form an alliance to ensure an ESAs reform that

The Chinese stock market crash, at first mistakenly identified as merely a “healthy clearing of froth”, triggered volatility in markets across the region and continues to gain momentum. “Black Monday”, as the event was nicknamed by “People’s Daily”, the Communist party’s newspaper, was the culmination of a week of the biggest declines witnessed on the Shanghai

BETTER FINANCE’s concerns on the review of Shareholder Rights Directive were echoed in two recent articles by Daniel Hunter in Freshbusinessthinking.com and in InternationalTrade platform. Speaking at the 15th European Corporate Governance Conference held in Milan, Guillaume Prache, Managing Director at BETTER FINANCE, stressed that many individual shareholders of EU companies will still have to pay high fees to exercise their voting

A recent article in Shares magazine drew attention to BETTER FINANCE’s preoccupation with ESMA’s failure to recognise the mounting losses hitting European savers and investors. Our concerns were noted by Tom Sieber who stressed that "investors deserve better".   Please find the article here and our press release here.

Following a debate on the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) held on the 12th of May in Brussels, Funds Europe now draws attention to BETTER FINANCE’s concerns regarding the fees that individual investors often have to pay in order to exercise their voting rights. BETTER FINANCE believes that European shareholders should be able to

After the 2023 AGM season and looking ahead to the 2024 season, BETTER FINANCE and its member organisations voice concerns about the erosion of shareholder rights. Inadequate rules for Virtual Annual General Meetings (AGMs) in some Member States highlight the need for broader engagement and representation frameworks for investors to truly benefit from digitalisation. The

BETTER FINANCE’s full Response to the Targeted Consultation on SRDs – Shareholder Rights Directives (SRD1 and SRD2) for the European Commission by the CSES — [15 December 2023]. BETTER FINANCE advocates for the enforcement of investors’ and shareholders’ rights, underscoring the pivotal role of engagement as a cornerstone within robust green transition plans and corporate

Panel 1 | Capital market development in CEE - potential and constraints BETTER FINANCE Materials CMU Assessment Report 2019-2022 Partner Materials Panel 2 | Empowering individual investors: improving outcomes and ensuring best execution BETTER FINANCE Materials Transparency and Best Execution for Retail Traders and Investors - Policy Position Retail Investment Strategy shows potential, but fails

EU Law rightly requires information provided to individual investors to be clear, i.e., “presented in a way that is likely to be understood by, the average member of the group to whom it is directed, or by whom it is likely to be received”, and as such, retail investors expect definitions and classifications of funds

INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATIONS (for non-professional readers) European Union (EU) authorities aim to improve the conditions of saving and investing in capital markets for EU households through several regulatory and supervisory actions. Currently, most of these initiatives stem from the recommendations of the High-Level Forum on the Future of the Capital Markets Union,[1] on which the European

We are alarmed that for the second time in less than two years the Republic of Slovenia moves to curtail the options available to minority shareholders to mitigate the burden of costs imposed on them by financial intermediaries. Specifically, the proposed Paragraph 10 of Article 296 of the Market in Financial Instruments Act (ZTFI-1) targets

As pointed out at several occasions by BETTER FINANCE , EU citizens as savers are by nature mostly long-term driven, evidenced by the fact that 67% of their total assets are deployed in long-term investments (versus only 37% for pension funds – despite their purely long-term horizon – and 10% or less for insurers), and

BETTER FINANCE agrees that in order to avoid legal uncertainty and the multiplication of legal requirements for crowdfunding platforms, MiFID II should not apply to crowdfunding providers who have been authorized as crowdfunding providers under the ECSP.

As pointed out at several occasions by BETTER FINANCE , EU citizens as savers are by nature mostly long-term driven, evidenced by the fact that 67% of their total assets are deployed in long-term investments (versus only 37% for pension funds – despite their purely long-term horizon – and 10% or less for insurers), and

As part of the Paris agreement, the EU has taken ambitious steps for the transition to a sustainable European economy. BETTER FINANCE supports the integration of sustainability into the mandate of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) in order to put pressure on the financial sector to address these issues. To this end, institutional investors and

In order to effectively contribute to the strengthening of the Capital Markets Union, BETTER FINANCE believes that sustainable investment products require binding standards ensuring the trust of EU citizens in sustainable retail investment products and positive returns.

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authorities (EIOPA) launches the Call for Expression of Interest regarding the setting up of EIOPA Stakeholder Groups, the Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group (IRSG) and the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group (OPSG), following the expiration of their mandates later this year. The Stakeholder Groups are set up to help facilitate

As pointed out at several occasions by BETTER FINANCE , EU citizens as savers are by nature mostly long-term driven, evidenced by the fact that 67% of their total assets are deployed in long-term investments (versus only 37% for pension funds – despite their purely long-term horizon – and 10% or less for insurers), and