Newsletter Jun 2007: UK gets mixed response to MiFiD gold-plating bid

LONDON – The Financial Services Authority (FSA), Britain’s regulator, has had a mixed response from the European Commission to its attempt to “goldplate” aspects of the sweeping new law aimed at opening up the EU financial markets. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), which comes into effect across the 27-country bloc at the beginning of November, makes the practice of “gold plating” – where governments embellish EU laws with extra provisions to achieve some, often more onerous, local requirement – intentionally difficult. This is because Commission officials are concerned to prevent countries from goldplating the new law for fear that such moves will create local differences that undermine the objective of an open and competitive single market in financial services (see GRR, April 2007).