Andrew Baker, Chief Executive Officer of AIMA has voiced huge concerns regarding the recent activities surrounding the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and that European finance ministers at the ECOFIN meeting have agreed to give the Presidency the mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Council with Parliament.

For those of you coming along to our BVI House event on the 3rd June (details here) will no doubt be able to listen and talk to Andrew in more detail regarding these concerns. But in summary AIMA's concerned that “many of the proposals in the texts of the Directive discussed by the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and European finance ministers at the ECOFIN meeting are impractical and unworkable”; and we are also concerned that “the Directive singles out our industry for special treatment and imposes controls and burdens that it does not place on other financial market participants.”

The approved ECON report and the text discussed at ECOFIN (now known as the Council’s General Approach) will serve as the basis for negotiations at the ‘trilogue’ meetings.  During the process of reconciliation trilogues, due to take place in the coming months, the three institutions (Council, Commission, Parliament) will try to agree a compromise text.  Once a compromise text is agreed, it will require final sign-off by the European Council and will be put forward to a vote in Plenary, currently scheduled for 6 July.

There is a hope that further improvements to the final legal text will come out of the trilogue process.  Most importantly, we expect that the investor ban will disappear.  Similarly, it is expected that many of the Council amendments will prevail over those of the European Parliament as they are technically more workable and less disruptive.  It will be important for the UK government to come out with a renewed engagement and rally key Member States in order for the final compromise text to be practical. The Commission will side with the EP on many of the issues simply by virtue of the fact that the EP text is closer to the spirit of the Commission’s original proposal.

AIMA will continue to be engaged intensively with the Commission, key Member States and Members of Parliament. The two texts have now roughly delineated the space of possible final compromises.

As always, AIMA will keep us updated on the AIFMD’s progress. For those wishing to listen to little more background, Andrew recently gave a video interview that can be viewed here.