Negotiations on the revised IORP Directive are “close to successful closure”, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup, said ahead of a trialogue meeting on 15 June.

The Dutch finance minister said the “next and hopefully last” trialogue meeting between the European Commission, member states and European Parliament to settle details of the Directive was due to take place this evening.

He provided the update when addressing the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) on 14 June during a meeting discussing the soon-to-conclude Dutch presidency of the Council of the EU.

Dijsselbloem said the council was “working very hard to facilitate the finalisation of the negotiations between the co-legislators” on the proposal for IORP II.

“I think we are close to a successful closure there,” added Dijsselbloem.

ECON is chaired by Italian MEP Roberto Gualtieri, who Dijsselbloem noted had already mentioned today’s scheduled trialogue meeting in his remarks to the committee.

Dijsselbloem’s comments on the IORP negotiations come after Brian Hayes, Irish MEP and the rapporteur on the project of the directive’s revision, earlier this month said that disagreements remained on cross-border funding and the use of custodians  – referred to as depositories within the legislation.

“We have made progress in a number of key areas, but it’s fair to say quite a number of outstanding issues remain,” he said on the occasion of the launch of a business plan for a European pension-tracing service in Brussels on 1 June.

He said the discussions were “very intensive”.

Thomas Mann, another MEP and a member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, had previously spoken about tension over the designation of pension funds as financial service providers but still said he hoped the revised IORP law would be finalised by June at the latest.

Topics