CSDs invited to join the TARGET2-Securities initiative

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) is today issuing a proposal to all European central securities depositories (CSDs) to join the TARGET2-Securities (T2S) initiative. This proposal consists of:

The results of the economic impact analysis show that T2S has the potential to bring significant benefits both to securities market participants and to the European economy generally.

T2S is a major step forward in delivering a single integrated securities market for financial services, reinforcing the Lisbon agenda and in particular the Code of Conduct and the Giovannini harmonisation effort. T2S will deliver a single borderless pool of Europe-wide securities, and a core, neutral, state-of-the-art settlement process. Market users will access these assets through CSDs in a way which can accommodate, but which does not perpetuate, national and regional differences – and which already embodies agreed harmonisation in several valuable areas.

CSDs are invited to inform the ECB by 4 July 2008 whether they support T2S and intend to use the service once in operation. The Governing Council is scheduled to take a decision in summer 2008 on whether to proceed with the T2S project based on the full T2S documentation, the level of support conveyed by CSDs, the views expressed by market participants more widely and those put forward by the Council of the European Union.

For further and more detailed information please refer to the documents listed above, which can be obtained on the ECB’s website http://www.ecb.europa.eu .