ADICAE GLOBAL - ADICAE international | ADICAE - Consumidores críticos, responsables y solidarios

ADICAE GLOBAL > ADICAE international > International Representation

International Representation

Euroshareholders

Euroshareholders is the organisation of European shareholders associations. It was founded in 1992 with its General Secretariat in Brussels. At present Euroshareholders gathers around 30 national shareholders associations all over Europe.

The organisation's overall task is to represent the interests of individual shareholders in the European Union. The main objectives of Euroshareholders are:

to protect and represent the interests of shareholders and other investors in listed securities;
to enhance shareholders' value;
to guarantee equal treatment of all shareholders;
to support harmonisation at the EU level on appropriate issues;
to support corporate governance principles at the European level;
to promote financial education and scientific research on capital market and shareholder value, e.g. in the regulatory area.

EuroFinuse

EuroFinuse acts as an independent financial expertise centre to the direct benefit of the European financial services users (end-users, consumers, retail investors, etc.) and other stakeholders of the European financial services who are independent from the financial industry.

Counting more than fifty national and international member and sub-member organisations, since the creation of the organization in 2009, creation in which actively collaborated ADICAE, currently a member of its Board of Directors, the main objective has been to restore financial services consumers’ confidence. In order to do so, we are focusing on four key priorities:

Better protection of financial services consumers
Better transparency, liquidity, integrity, and efficiency of capital markets
More responsible and more competitive lending
Better governance of financial supervision

In addition to Euroshareholders and EuroFinUse, Adicae is member of Consumers International, where we participate directly carrying out investigations, contributing to the debate on policies, lobbying on international subjects and sending delegates to international events.

After the reestructuration of the European Supervisory Authorities, we still acting in some important european Working Groups, like:

Financial Services Users Group (FSUG)

In its White Paper on Financial Services Policy 2005–2010, the Commission stated that it attaches great importance to ensuring proportionate user representation in the policy making. In the Communication for the European Council – Driving European Recovery, the Commission put the interests of European investors, consumers and SMEs at the centre of the financial market reform.

As a measure to achieve these targets, the Commission set up a Financial Services User Group (FSUG). The group’s task is to:

advise the Commission in the preparation of legislation or policy initiatives which affect the users of financial services
provide insight, opinion and advice concerning the practical implementation of such policies
proactively seek to identify key financial services issues which affect users of financial services
iaise with and provide information to financial services user representatives and representative bodies at the European Union and national level.

FSUG has 20 members, who are individuals appointed to represent the interests of consumers, retail investors or micro-enterprises, and individual experts with expertise in financial services from the perspective of the financial services users.

Being the member in representation of the Spanish consumers, ADICAE has done in the FSUG tasks such as:

Contribution to the single document on the transparency, comparability, fees and access to bank accounts.
Contribution to the single document on means to protect consumers in financial difficulty.
Contribution to the single document on reform of the European banking system.
Recommendations on the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution to resolve disputes related to commercial transactions and practices in the EU.

Payment Systems Market Expert Group (PSMEG)

The Payment Systems Market Expert Group (PSMEG) helps the Commission prepare legislative acts or policy initiatives on payment issues, including fraud prevention. The group:

provides insight on the practical implementation of the policies
serves as a forum for an exchange of views on best practices and issues of concern to the market
is composed of 40 experts in the area of payments, representing the supply and the demand side of the market.

PSMEG meetings are held in Brussels and they are chaired by the Commission (DG Internal Market & Services). ADICAE has attended to several meetings to study several issues, such the impact in Spain of the Payment Services Directive.