Recommendation 2007/657 - Electronic network of officially appointed mechanisms for the central storage of regulated information referred to in Directive 2004/109/EC (notified under document number C(2007) 4607) - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 267/16

Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 2004 on the harmonisation of transparency requirements in relation to information about issuers whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market and amending Directive 2001/34/EC (1) requires that the access for investors to information about issuers is more organised at a Community level in order to actively promote the integration of European capital markets.

Directive 2004/109/EC obliges the competent authorities of the Member States to draw up guidelines with a view to further facilitate public access to information to be disclosed under Directive 2003/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on insider dealing and market manipulation (market abuse) (2), Directive 2003/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 on the prospectus to be published when securities are offered tot he public or admitted to trading and amending directive 2001/34/EC (3) and Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and to create a single electronic network (hereinafter ‘the electronic network’) or a platform of electronic networks across Member States linking the different mechanisms appointed at national level for the storage of such information (hereinafter ‘the storage mechanisms’).

The competent authorities of the Member States adopted, within Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) established by Commission Decision 2001/527/EC (4), an opinion to the Commission on 30 June 2006, in which they expressed a preference for a simple electronic network mode linking the storage mechanisms. Such network could be accessed via a common interface which would contain a list of all listed companies in the Community and would redirect the user to the site of the relevant storage mechanism. The relevant data would thus remain stored at national level without any need to establish a common infrastructure replicating all the relevant information contained at national level and incurring excessive additional costs.

It is appropriate to provide at this stage for voluntary standards giving the necessary flexibility to the storage mechanisms to adapt themselves to the functioning of the electronic network.

It is desirable that the storage mechanisms are able to interconnect electronically to each other, so that investors and interested parties can easily accede to financial information on listed companies in the Community. In order to provide for a rapid establishment of such an electronic network, it should be based on simple conditions such as those suggested by the competent authorities of the Member States. A simple network should also allow for the provision of added value services to investors.

For the purposes of facilitating the access of investors to financial information on listed companies, storage mechanisms should be invited to integrate, wherever possible, related financial information disclosed by issuers in accordance with other Community or national acts.

In order to enable effective launching of the electronic network, the competent authorities of the Member States,...