European Union News - Internal Market

The European Commission proposed a new Directive in order to create a more harmonised framework for prosecuting and punishing crimes involving the EU budget so that criminals no longer exploit differences between national legal systems. According to Viviane Reding, the EU's Justice Commissioner, currently some Member States punish one crime with imprisonment whilst others take no action.

The European Commission launched a proposal which would imply that collecting societies willing to engage in the multi-territorial licensing of their repertoire have to comply with European standards. According to the Commission, some collecting societies struggle to adapt to the requirements of the management of rights for online use of musical works, in particular in a cross-border context. The main objective of the proposal is to make easier music licensing in the Single Market.

The 2012-2013 pilot phase of the EU project bonds initiative which is aimed at mobilising up to €4.5 billion in private sector for financing key strategic infrastructure projects has been launched by adopting for the the Council a regulation. In addition, the Council has given to Spain an extra year to correct its deficit, i.e. until 2014.

MEPs approved a resolution which highlights that basic banking services should be a legal right for the 10% of EU citizens who currently do not have any, including homeless people, those on very low incomes, students, people with no credit record and expatriate workers. According to the text, the basic payment account must always be cheaper than any alternative offered by a given institution.

The European Commission adopted a Delegated Act which specifies the cases in which sovereign credit default swaps are considered covered, and therefore not banned in accordance with the Short Selling Regulation. In addition it includes rules relating to the reporting of short positions in shares and sovereign debt and the thresholds which can trigger a short term suspension of short selling in illiquid shares and other financial instruments.

MEPs approved a plan that has as main objective to attract private investment in transport, energy and information technology network projects. The scheme, that will be managed by the European Investment Bank (EIB), will allocate €230 million in guarantees to back the private issuance of "project bonds".