INSURANCE: NEARER TO NEW RULES ON INTERMEDIARIES.

The European Commission is expected to come up this year with its long-awaited proposal on how the insurance intermediary sector - insurance brokers and agents - should function in the Single Market. Over the last two years, it has produced two major working documents on different approaches to the subject, examining options that included updating the existing legislation, full harmonisation of access to the profession, and mutual recognition of national status on the basis of a limited harmonisation (see, for instance, European Report No 2359).

Minimum harmonisation and maximum mutual recognition is the option that has won the widest support - from twelve Member States, the European insurance industry association, CEA, and, subject to some qualifications, from European consumers and from the intermediaries' own association, BIPAR. The Commission is continuing to explore how such an approach could work in practice. There is some EU legislation in the field - but it could need some revision to make the Single Market in the insurance sector really work. A possibility would be to widen the scope of the 1976 Directive to give greater force to some of the elements outlined in the 1991 Recommendation: * mandatory professional liability insurance - most Member States already require this, but with varying levels and conditions, so the Commission is examining a minimum of...