ABSTRACT
The Financial Services Action Plan, COM (1999)232 11.05.1999, sets out the European Commission’s goal of building a fully integrated European financial services market by 2005 to complement the introduction of the Euro. Central to this goal are the twin pillars of bringing legal certainty to a number of related areas in European financial services and secondly, to increase consumer confidence in both e-commerce and new technology. One such area is the Distance Marketing of Consumer Financial Services Directive (2002/65/EC) (the Directive) which must be implemented into Irish law by 9 October 2004 (Art 21(1)). It will be interesting to see if the Directive is transposed into Irish law with anything like the same speed as its near relation, the Distance Selling Directive (97/7/EC). This was implemented one year ahead of schedule by the European Communities (Protection of Consumers in Respect of Contracts Made by Distance Communication) Regulations 2001 (SI 207/2001) (the 2001 Regulations); see Madden, ‘A safe distance’ (2002) Law Society Gazette, May, at 14, which deals comprehensively with the 2001 Regulations. Distance selling of financial services was seen as sufficiently important to deserve separate treatment on its own outside of the Distance Selling Directive (97/7/EC). Not surprisingly there is a similarity in the language and terms used by both Directives. It is proposed in this chapter to examine the main features of the Directive and to outline some of the implications facing the financial services industry.
