The study of the interaction between different pieces of EU financial legislation becomes ever more important – and difficult. A recent paper by Prof. Veerle Colaert (see ssrn or academia.edu) explores the relationship between the MiFID II and other recent EU legislation aiming at investor protection, such as the Insurance Distribution Directive, the PRIIPs Regulation and the UCITS Directive.
The analysis reveals numerous inconsistencies and interpretation difficulties. The author argues that while some of the shortcomings are inherent to the EU piecemeal approach, other problems should and could have been avoided, by adopting a holistic approach of financial regulation and supervision.
[O]n account of the EU’s piecemeal approach to financial legislation, MiFID II has had to pick up some of the crumbs of other pieces of legislation, and vice versa. Yet, as the various regulators soldier on, trying to come up with novel ways to fix the design and construction flaws in the financial legislation house, the stakeholders have been footing the bill. In EU financial legislation, we might see quite a bit more bills coming before an alternative, cross-sectoral approach to crafting legislation and organizing supervision takes hold.
Published in: Danny Busch and Guido Ferrarini, Regulation of the EU Financial Markets: MiFID II and MiFIR (Oxford: OUP, 2016)
Corporate Finance Lab 