The ABBL has created an office in Brussels to carry out its advocacy activities and defend the interests of its members directly with the European Parliament and the European Commission. These activities are part of the democratic process and are registered in the European transparency register.
We closely monitor the evolutions of all legislative proposals at EU level relating to the banking sector and the financial centre as a whole. An overview, regularly updated, is available here.
At the national level, we work in close collaboration with the various economic and political actors. For example, with the Luxembourg Employers Association (UEL) in order to represent the interests of financial institutions on topics such as teleworking outside the COVID-19 context.
Topics on the agenda
Themes for which we are actively involved in the advocacy process are:
- Capital Markets Union (CMU), especially with the launch of the CMU action plan and the ensuing concrete action points
- Brexit and further related policy decisions taken by relevant authorities
- IBOR reform
- AIFMD Review
- EU strategy on sustainable finance
- Evaluation of the current VAT rules on financial services
- Digital Euro
- Digital Finance Package, including the regulation on markets in crypto-assets (MiCA), the regulation on a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology, the digital operational resilience (DORA) and a draft report on emerging risks in crypto-assets
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in particular on the uncertainty surrounding data transfers to third countries
- MiFID Review: The ABBL not only provided an extensive contribution, but also worked, together with its membership, on defining clear priorities and principles for the MiFID review.
Consumer protection
Consumer protection is also a key priority at European level, and specifically:
- Consumer credit and the suppression of the current threshold, including new types of credit, the creditworthiness assessment requirements and the provision of precontractual information to the consumer.
- Payment accounts and the feasibility of automated redirection of payments, a framework allowing the EU-wide portability of payment account numbers and the switching of payment accounts cross-border.
- Mortgage credit and pre-contractual information, creditworthiness requirements, early repayment, access to credit data-bases, credit intermediaries
- Collective action, aiming to allow to introduce an action by a consumer or a qualified entity against a trader breaching a provision of the Consumer Code.
Contact us
Members are invited to contact our European Affairs Team for specific questions.
Please send an email to mail@abbl.lu.