EU AIFM - Update No. 8

The AIFM Directive continues to make its way through the EU institutions and while little concrete progress has been made to date, we are entering a critical phase of negotiations. The text is currently being debated by both the Parliament and the Council, whose resulting drafts will need to be reconciled before the Directive can become law.

The EU Council: In the Council, the Spanish presidency has produced a reworked text, with a full redraft of the Directive due for when EU Finance Ministers meet in March, but this appears ambitious. Member states remain divided over key areas of the text, and issues which were thought to have been closed off under the Swedish presidency appear to be opening up again.

Parliament: The main parliamentary group assessing the text (the ECON committee) had until 21 January to put forward suggested changes. Shortly after this deadline, it emerged that 1300 amendments had been tabled. This is an unprecedented number for EU financial services legislation and reflects the strength of feeling on the issue. Amendments will be consolidated and debated on 22-23 February and 16-17 March with the aim of a committee vote on the compromise text in April and a plenary vote in July.

A further complication is that separately the JURI committee (the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee) is also assessing parts of the text. It has proposed a series of additional changes but it remains to be seen how influential they will be in producing the final parliament text. We have focused our attention on the portfolio company disclosure requirements, which we believe should be consistent with national company law.

As full details of the ECON Committee amendments emerge over the next few weeks and debate within the JURI Committee continues, the BVCA will continue to publish fortnightly updates on the current state of play.