More transparent bank current accounts, with more homogeneous, simpler, clearer rules especially regarding management costs by current account holders. Who will have to be guaranteed a wider possibility of comparing the conditions offered by the various banks in their own country but also in the other EU member states, and greater ease both in opening and closing an account. This is what the European Commission is asking for in a proposal for a directive presented today in Brussels by Commissioners Michel Barnier (Single Market and Services) and Tonio Borg (Consumers and Health).
“In today's world, not having a checking account makes daily life more expensive and more complicated. And this draft directive aims precisely to simplify the management of income and expenses for all European citizens, allowing them to compare the different offers in terms of conditions and costs by banks in the 27 EU countries and, consequently , to choose the most convenient one for each,” Barnier said in presenting the proposal.
“From a recent study conducted in Europe - said Borg - it was learned that, out of a hundred current account holders intending to change banks, as many as 19 have given up due to the procedural complexities both for outgoing and incoming. Now, once this directive has been approved in the European Union and subsequently implemented by the EU Member States, becoming the holder of a bank account will be a right for every European citizen and no longer a faculty".
In a global context in which the use of cash is progressively and rapidly declining – underlined both commissioners – having a bank account is becoming more and more an indispensable necessity every day. All the more so in the European context, where the single market, in the presence of a significant growth in online purchases (think, for example, of paying for plane and train tickets or hotel stays), has broken down barriers up to a few years makes insurmountable. But so far it has not been sufficiently able to allow consumers to spend less thanks to an ever easier comparison between different offers.
The text of the directive proposed by the Commission mainly concerns three areas. The first tends to make the costs of managing a current account more transparent. And therefore underlines the need for account holders to be provided first of all with an information document containing a clear list of the services offered and the relative expenses for each of these. Then a detailed account statement of the expenses charged to the customer for each of the transactions carried out in the previous twelve months. Furthermore, at the request of the account holder, a glossary of terms (comprehensible and standardized) contained in these documents. And finally, each Member State will have to open a website that contains at least one comparison table between the various offers, compiled by an independent entity.
The second area of the directive concerns the costs associated with closing a current account in one bank and opening it in another. In the first place, when a customer requests to transfer all or part of the payment orders (such as, for example, the domiciliation of bills or periodical wire transfers), the bank must immediately interrupt the debits relating to the connected expenses. The procedure must be completed within 15 days (30 if the two banks are in different EU Member States). And account holders must have been informed in advance of the conditions relating to the change of credit institution, which in any case must be free.
The third area indicates the conditions regarding the opening of a current account, which must be allowed to all European citizens, and therefore not only to residents. And, in this regard, each Member State will have to ensure that at least one of the banks present in its territory must be able to apply the basic conditions of current accounts in the customer's country of residence to current account holders in another EU State. Finally, the draft directive lists the minimum essential services connected to a bank account: which are money withdrawals, wire transfers and a credit card.
Since it is a directive, the new rules contained in the Commission's draft will not enter into force automatically once the European legislative process has been completed, as happens instead in the case of a regulation. But they will have to be transposed into the legislation of each of the Member States. This will obviously mean longer times for their implementation. But in the meantime, as they say to the Commission "the die is cast".
