Directive 2023/2864 amended in 2023 Directive 2009/138 (the SII directive or SII) by inserting a new Article 304b into SII. That article was not amended by the SII Review Directive (Directive 2025/2). As a result, according to Article 304b, the following information will be accessible on the European single access point (ESAP) as of 10 January 2030.

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Seven Member States – the Republic of Lithuania, the Republic of Bulgaria, Romania, the Republic of Cyprus, Hungary, the Republic of Malta and the Republic of Poland – have been seeking annulment of certain provisions of legislative measures forming part of the EU’s ‘Mobility Package’, proposed by the Commission in 2017 and adopted in 2020, resulting in fifteen joined cases. According to the advocate-general Pitruzella, these fifteen joined cases (C-541-20 till C-555-20 against European Parliament and Council of the European Union as co-legislators, and joined by the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Austria, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, the Hellenic Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the French Republic, the Kingdom of Denmark and the Italian Republic, which intervened in support of the Parliament and the Council) “have a truly exceptional dimension. Rarely has a legislative undertaking given rise to such a grouped and intense contentious reaction at EU level.

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The DORA Regulation will become applicable to all (re)insurance undertakings subject to the Solvency II directive (SII) on 17 January 2025 according to its Article 2(3)(b)). Very small insurers, exempted from SII according to Article 4 SII, are also exempted from the obligations under the DORA regulation. But the application dates of these two European legislative instruments don’t fit together which is especially a problem for a new group of exempted very small insurers.

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On 5 November 2024, the European Council adopted the two pieces of legislation of the Solvency II review. The first part is the directive that amends the 2009 Solvency II directive, the EU’s main piece of legislation in the insurance area. The second piece of the package is a new directive which introduces new rules on insurance recovery and resolution for all EU insurers and reinsurers.

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Recently, during the summer holidays, EIOPA disclosed public versions of two previously confidential chapters of the Solvency II (SII) part of its existing Supervisory Handbook. It concerns a chapter on the supervision of climate change risks in the context of SII Pillar II requirements and a chapter on the supervision of intra-group transactions and risk concentrations, both initially adopted by EIOPA early 2022. Continue reading…

On 14 March 2024, the European Commission decided to extend the provisional equivalence decision regarding the insurance and reinsurance solvency regime in force in the US. The regime applicable to insurance and reinsurance undertakings with head offices in the US is to be considered provisionally equivalent to the solvency rules related to the valuation of assets and liabilities, technical provisions, own funds, SCR, MCR and investment rules as laid down in Solvency II (SII). “EU insurance groups will be able to calculate capital requirements for their operations in the US on the basis of local rules. By eliminating the need to reconcile with EU rules, European groups can continue to operate on an equal footing with their American counterparts, and to benefit from alleviated administrative burden and reduced costs”, thus the Commission. Continue reading…

The Swiss Confederation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland signed an agreement on mutual recognition in financial services, also called the Berne Financial Services Agreement, on 21 December 2023. It has several sectoral annexes, each dealing with the details for a particular financial sector. Annex 4 deals with insurance. The purpose of the Agreement, the mutual recognition, is reiterated in the annex: “Covered Financial Services Suppliers are permitted to provide Covered Services to Covered Clients from the territory of one Party into the territory of the other Party, as set out and specified in the Sectoral Annexes”. The covered services for both Parties in the insurance field are not entirely the same. Continue reading…

After more than 2 years of negotiating, just a few days before Christmas, on 21 December 2023, Karin Keller-Sutter, the head of the Swiss Federal Department of Finance, and Jeremy Hunt, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, signed the Agreement between the Swiss Confederation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on Mutual Recognition in Financial Services, also called the Berne Financial Services Agreement. According to both parties, the Agreement is unique in the world in the area of financial services in terms of scope – encompassing a broad range of financial services sectors – and also in terms of approach: a two-way, and not a one-way, equivalence recognition. It sends a strong signal for open and resilient financial markets, according to the Parties. The Agreement was borne out of a desire of both countries to establish a framework for mutual recognition of each other’s regulatory and supervisory frameworks applicable to certain financial services, while taking account of their respective constitutional, legal and regulatory systems. Parties want to achieve this (1) through the removal of obstacles to the provision of financial services and the reduction of regulatory frictions for cross-border activity, based on and safeguarded by mutual recognition as well as (2) close regulatory and supervisory cooperation. Continue reading…

In less than a week, the Belgian treasury managed to raise a total of 21.896 billion euro from retail investors and savers for a hardly announced government bond, four times its target. It was the talk of the town, and a success nobody had imagined. It will go down in history as the largest capital operations of the Belgian government among its citizens. Belgium was not the only country in the EU which recently went directly to its citizens: also Italy, Portugal and Greece have done so. But why was the Belgian issuance such a roaring success ? Continue reading…

The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament agreed on 18 July 2023 the Ferber reports on the Solvency II review. The Ferber reports took nearly two years of gestation, but were finally adopted, with a larger majority for the Solvency II amendments than for the proposal for an Insurance Recovery and Resolution directive (IRRD). The report on the Solvency II amendments was adopted with 55 in favour, 3 against and 1 abstention, the report on IRRD was adopted with 44 in favour, 7 against and 8 abstentions. The reports are now tabled in the next European Parliament’s plenary for announcement on the ECON vote and on the mandate to enter into interinstitutional negotiations.  Thereafter, the Spanish presidency, the Commission and the European Parliament can start the trilogue. Will this go smoothly? It depends. Continue reading…