The European Commission has said in the future it will look to make draft texts of its implemented and delegated acts for key EU financial publicly available.
First vice-president Frans Timmerman has made the proposal as part of his better regulation agenda.
The proposal is at the early stages, with the commission hoping to conclude negotiations with the parliament and council on it by the of this year.
This is what the commission said in a Q&A:
What will change with implementing and delegated acts?
For the first time, the draft texts of delegated acts – measures which amend or supplement non-essential elements of EU legislation – will be open for public comments on the Commission’s website for four weeks. This is in parallel to the existing consultation of Member State experts.
Important implementing acts – setting out detailed or specific application of primary legislation – will also be made public for four weeks. This allows for stakeholder comments to be communicated to Member State experts in the relevant Committee, for their consideration when adopting their position.
The Commission will publish online an indicative list of upcoming acts, so that stakeholders can plan ahead accordingly.
Presumably if this was in place now, we would be able to access now or soon the draft delegated acts for MiFID II, which will include the important definition of a physical forward. The final acts are due to be published between July and September, with an important commission-led meeting taking place on Tuesday to discuss the definition, among other topics related to financial regulation.
Making draft acts available sooner would remove the slightly absurd situation where journalists need to source these sort of draft acts via leaks. My suspicion is that picking up a leak ahead of the drafts being made available would still be needed to see where the commission is going.
The proposal is likely to meet resistance, given some will suspect it is a power grab of sorts by the commission, as this press release already shows. I will examine the proposals in greater detail later.