BRUSSELS, 16 September 2026 – FIA has published a paper calling for targeted reforms to the European Union’s financial services rulemaking process and setting out 21 practical recommendations to improve transparency, regulatory coherence and implementation.
The paper, A Pathway to Smarter Regulation in Financial Services, examines how improvements to the rulemaking process could support the EU's objectives of competitiveness, growth and well-functioning capital markets.
Many of the compliance burdens and legal uncertainties facing market participants arise not from regulatory objectives themselves, but from the way rules are developed, drafted and implemented. FIA's paper presents a series of recommendations to improve transparency, coherence and proportionality without requiring wholesale legislative change.
The recommendations are directed to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Supervisory Authorities and focus on measures that could be implemented through changes to institutional practices and regulatory processes.
The publication of the paper comes as the EU intensifies efforts to strengthen competitiveness, support economic growth and simplify regulation.
"The European Union has rightly focused on competitiveness and growth, but achieving these goals also depends on the way policy is developed and implemented," said Jacqueline Mesa, COO and senior vice president of global policy at FIA. "This paper sets out practical recommendations for developing laws and accompanying rules that would improve transparency, reduce unnecessary complexity and create a more predictable regulatory environment, while preserving the EU's regulatory objectives."
The paper calls for a stronger application of existing commitments under the 2016 Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making, alongside targeted improvements in regulatory drafting, procedural transparency and coordination between EU institutions.
The 21 recommendations are grouped under four themes: transparent rulemaking, effective and efficient rulemaking, orderly rulemaking and sequencing, and regulatory powers.
Key proposals include:
- Increasing transparency in Council, Parliament and trilogue negotiations through earlier publication of key documents and compromise texts.
- Improving sequencing so that detailed implementing rules are available before firms are expected to comply with new obligations.
- Promoting outcomes-based regulation rather than prescriptive operational processes, with explicit proportionality mechanisms reflecting firm size and complexity.
- Exploring longer-term reforms that could grant the European Securities and Markets Authority and other European Supervisory Authorities the power to issue legally binding no-action relief that suspends or disapplies regulatory obligations in defined circumstances, subject to appropriate procedural safeguards.
Together, the recommendations would help create a more predictable and effective regulatory framework that supports the EU's objectives for growth, competitiveness and strong capital markets. FIA looks forward to engaging with policymakers, regulators and market participants on the proposals.
Read the paper here.
