Voters in 28 European countries are to cast their ballots later this month, as they do every five years, to elect their MEPs and therefore decide the composition of the European Parliament.
Many are predicting that the unhappiness of millions of EU citizens with Europe generally – and the way the European Union has handled the recent and ongoing economic crisis in particular – will be expressed in a dramatic way at the ballot box.
Estimates vary, but most pollsters are predicting that as many as one in five of the European Parliament’s seats could go to so-called anti-EU populist and nationalist candidates, once voters have had their say after the polls close on 25 May.
Shifting dynamics
The shift in the dynamics of the European Union is likely to continue as the summer progresses, as a new president of the European Commission is due to be elected in July, to succeed José Manuel Barroso, according to Derudder, who stepped down as chairman of the Fédération Européenne des Conseils et Intermédiaires Financiers (European Federation of Financial Advisers and Financial Intermediaries), earlier this week.
Derudder, who is based in Brussels, says he is concerned that the new anti-EU MEPs could do more damage to Europe’s financial services industry, which, he says, has just come through a torrid five years, and could do with a break.
“An estimated 150,000 European financial intermediaries have been forced out of business by over-regulation, with a knock-on loss of roughly 500,000 additional administrative jobs,” he explained.
However, within the last few months, the European Commission has begun to show “that it is aware that the time has come to change its strategy, and that there is a need to begin to dramatically reduce the administrative burden on people and businesses that it has helped to create”, according to Derudder, who says it could be a positive sign, as long as the message is passed on to the new crop of MEPs.
The elections will come barely a month after the outgoing European Parliament, in its last plenary session, signed off on a raft of new financial services regulations, some of which have been in the works for years.
They included the latest version of the Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS V); a wide-ranging overhaul of the EU’s Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II); and the Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance Products (PRIIPs) directive, with its Key Information Document requirement.
One of the few initiatives that has been in the works but which was not approved was a planned revision of the Insurance Mediation Directive, IMD2. According to Philip Woolfson, a Brussels-based partner in Steptoe & Johnson LLP and an expert on EU financial services and tax legislation, that directive’s fate will now depend on whether the new European Parliament wishes to proceed with it in the autumn.
Click here to read a recent column from Derudder in which he sets out his concerns
