Directive 2003/71/EC on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered to the public or admitted to trading (“the Prospectus Directive”) came into force on 31st December 2003, and was required to be implemented by Member States by 1st July 2005 at the latest.
The Prospectus Directive is supplemented by Regulation (EC) No. 809/2004 of 29 April 2004 which became effective also on 1st July 2005.
Now that this European Prospectus regime is more than a year old it seems valuable at this point for CESR to assess whether it is really working on the ground, and in particular whether it is contributing to the development of the single market for securities.
As reconfirmed by the ECOFIN conclusions adopted on 5 May 2006 by the EU Finance Ministers, CESR´s main role to fully achieve the benefits of the single market is to promote supervisory convergence amongst Europe´s securities supervisors. This exercise will enable CESR to determine whether its members are following the path of convergence after one year of application of the Prospectus regime (Prospectus Directive and Prospectus Regulation).
This Call for Evidence is open for comment until 29 January 2007. Please post your answer online, in the section Consultations.
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