Sharon's speech in Plenary session in the European Parliament: EMIR (derivatives) on behalf of JURI, 5th July 2011
This proposal has had a lot of attention, partly because there has been a lack of transparency and understanding of derivatives - making derivatives a target for demonization.
However, derivatives are widely used for risk management, including by some corporate entities engaged in the real economy and by pension funds. Of course it is also true that many financial products they can be abused or made overly complex.
The legal affairs committee opinion was made early in the consideration and I appreciate the rapporteur reflected much of its contents in his report.
On JURI matters, we considered it key to dispel notion of retrospective legislation on outstanding contracts, which may well be illegal, however retrospective extension to reporting where it is simply due to electronic records I consider acceptable.
We are also pleased to see the uptake of the suggestion of FRAND - Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory licensing practices. This can usefully be applied in a range of financial services to achieve openness and competition while respecting legitimate property rights.
We are also pleased to see the inclusion of corporate exemptions for legitimate hedging and intra-group exemptions.