Just two years ago, Hungary, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Slovenia all implemented the European Union’s (EU’s) financial services regime, as it was then, as part of their accession. But in the same year, 2004, the EU set in train MiFID (the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive), a wide-ranging reform of the financial services sector, which all member states are required to implement by 1 November, 2007. With Bulgaria and Romania having joined the EU since then, what will be the impact on the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and what will they do to implement MiFID?
The new legislation will change the environment in which banks and investment firms operate across Europe; in the UK these changes are seen as the most significant for 20 years and have been compared with ‘Big Bang’ – the deregulation of the City of London – but the impact is potentially much greater in the CEE states, which have only recently adjusted to the current regime and where current legislation and supervision is often less wide-ranging.
