ECOFIN Council adopts new conclusions on SEPA

The Council stresses the importance of the full realisation of the SEPA project, which aims at achieving a competitive internal market for euro payments. It also welcomes the progress made by industry with the successful launch of the SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) scheme following the rollout of the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT), which enables payments services providers to offer a core and basic credit transfer service throughout SEPA whether for single or bulk payments.

Financial services providers and payment institutions are encouraged to develop and actively market SEPA Direct Debit products and services which meet the customers needs, while offering the latter at least comparable levels of current prices, services, security and guarantees, thus paving the way for migration from existing national direct debit products to the new SDD products.

The Council also underlines the important contribution that could be made by users with high payment volumes, including public authorities, corporates and other large entities when it comes to this migration. In this regard, it invites public authorities to show their willingness to facilitate the migration process by developing synchronised national migration programmes to achieve full migration of national public administrations to SEPA standards.

The ECOFIN Council also stresses the need for establishing definitive end-dates for SDD and SCT migration and for further improving the governance of the SEPA project. Thus, the Commission, the ECB and all actors involved in the SEPA project are encouraged to establish “a SEPA governance and monitoring structure at EU level bringing together the supply and demand sides on an equal footing under a neutral Chair before mid-2010.