Today the Council’s Permanent Representatives Committee approved the provisional agreement reached with the European Parliament on 8 November 2018 on the proposal for a European Accessibility Act (EAA). The proposal aims at making various products and services in the European Union more accessible for persons with disabilities. It is thought that more than 80 million people in the EU are affected by some degree of disability.

The new rules will bring benefits not only to tens of millions of Europeans, but also to many elderly people in the Union. Businesses will be able to provide services or to manufacture, sell or import products across the EU benefiting from uniform requirements at EU level.

Beate Hartinger-Klein, Federal Minister of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection of Austria

The European Accessibility Act includes accessibility requirements for key products and services such as:

• phones, computers, payment terminals or self-service terminals for buying passenger transport tickets;
• consumer banking services;
• electronic communications services, including for example phone and Internet services;
• the 112 emergency number calls;
• access to audio-visual media services;
• e-books;
• e-commerce.

The directive also includes common accessibility requirements on the user interface and functionality design of products, as well as more specific accessibility requirements for some electronic consumer equipment. For consumer products covered by the directive, packaging, installation instructions and other product information are to be accessible.

In the case of services, there are some common requirements (e.g. on webpages) and, in addition, service-specific requirements. The directive requires that support services should also be accessible.

Some examples of more specific accessibility requirements included in the directive are: self-service terminals, such as, for instance, ticketing machines or ATMs, will have to provide the possibility to use personal headsets so that visually impaired persons be able to follow audio instructions.  Where a self-service terminal provides for visual modes of operation, it shall provide at least one mode of operation that does not require user perception of colour.

Micro-enterprises /fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover below €2 million/ that provide services are exempted from the directive and those providing products will be exempted from some obligations. As a whole, the directive avoids imposing a “disproportionate burden” on the economic operators.

Background and next steps

The Commission presented its proposal in December 2015. The negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament started in March 2018 and ended with a provisional agreement on 8 November 2018. Following today’s approval of the agreement by the Permanent Representatives Committee, the directive will be sent to the European Parliament for adoption in the plenary. The final adoption in the Council is planned to take place in a Council meeting next year.

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ESMA has carefully considered the need to extend the intervention measure currently in effect. ESMA considers that a significant investor protection concern related to the offer of CFDs to retail clients continues to exist. It has therefore agreed to renew the measure from 1 February 2019 on the same terms as the previous renewal decision that started to apply on 1 November 2018.

Renewal of restriction on CFDs

The renewal was agreed by ESMA’s Board of Supervisors on 18 December 2018 and includes renewing the following:

1. Leverage limits on the opening of a position by a retail client from 30:1 to 2:1, which vary according to the volatility of the underlying:

• 30:1 for major currency pairs;
• 20:1 for non-major currency pairs, gold and major indices;
• 10:1 for commodities other than gold and non-major equity indices;
• 5:1 for individual equities and other reference values;
• 2:1 for cryptocurrencies;

     2. A margin close out rule on a per account basis. This will standardise the percentage of margin (at 50% of minimum required margin) at which providers are required to close  out one or more retail client’s open CFDs;

     3. Negative balance protection on a per account basis. This will provide an overall guaranteed limit on retail client losses;

     4. A restriction on the incentives offered to trade CFDs; and

     5. A standardised risk warning, including the percentage of losses on a CFD provider’s retail investor accounts. The standardised risk warning will continue to allow use of the  additional abbreviated risk warning introduced in the previous renewal decision for cases where the standard terms of a third party marketing provider have a character limit which is lower than the number of characters comprising the full or the abbreviated risk warning, provided that the advertisement also links to a webpage of the provider on which the full risk warning is disclosed. 

Next steps

ESMA intends to adopt the renewal measure in the official languages of the EU in the coming weeks, following which ESMA will publish an official notice on its website. The measure will then be published in the Official Journal of the EU and will start to apply from 1 February 2019 for a period of three months.

The .eu is the EU’s top-level internet domain name under which any person, organisation or business based in the EU – and soon any European citizen living outside the EU as well – can register their own domain name. The .eu governance rules are being revised, and today member states’ ambassadors endorsed the provisional agreement on this reform, which was reached by the presidency with the European Parliament on 5 December.

.eu is an essential building block for European online identity. It is important that its governance structures are up to date and future-proof, so that this easily recognisable label can continue to foster innovation and encourage European businesses and citizens to be active in the online single market.

Norbert Hofer, Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology of Austria, President of the Council

The .eu top-level domain has over 700 accredited registrars worldwide and a registry operator based in Belgium. The revision maintains the current rule that the registry must be a non-profit organisation, as is also common practice elsewhere in the world.

The governance of the .eu domain will be made more transparent by setting up a multi-stakeholder group to advise the Commission on the implementation of the rules. Its members will include representatives from the private sector, civil society and international organisations, among others.

EU citizens will have the right to register a .eu top-level domain name regardless of their place of residence.

With nearly 4 million registrations, the .eu top-level domain is one of the largest international country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). It contributes to a safe and secure online environment and ensures a pan-European presence in the global digital marketplace.

Procedure and next steps

The provisional agreement, which was reached in a single ‘trilogue’ meeting with the Parliament, was confirmed by ambassadors in the Council’s Permanent Representatives Committee.

The agreed text will now undergo legal and linguistic finalisation. It must then be formally adopted, first by the Parliament and then by the Council. Following adoption, the regulation will be published in the EU’s Official Journal. It will enter into force 20 days after publication.

The rules will apply from 13 October 2022, except for the broadened registration possibility for EU citizens, which will become applicable six months after the entry into force of the regulation.

The reform is part of the EU’s efforts to create a fully-fledged digital single market.

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