The Revision of the Insurance Mediation Rules at EU Level and its Impact on Consumer Protection

The European Commission has put forward a new proposal for a directive on insurance mediation which should provide for significant changes in practices of selling insurance products and guarantee enhanced level of consumer protection. This proposal accompanies other regulatory initiatives in the insurance sector, all of them pursuing three main objectives: firstly, a strengthened insurance supervision with convergent supervisory standards at EU level; secondly, a better risk management of insurance companies; and thirdly a greater protection of policyholders. All these initiatives contribute to the EU programme on consumer protection and herald a new approach to EU insurance regulation and supervision. However, while the new supervisory rules are a direct response to the financial crisis and shortcomings of crossborder cooperation between national supervisors, the plans for the revision of insurance mediation rules were conceived much earlier due to scandals with mis-selling of insurance products in the United States and some EU Member States. This article will focus entirely on the Commission’s initiative in the consumer mediation area and the aspects of insurance supervision and risk management will be dealt with in separate articles.

An Italian job: the need for collective wage bargaining reform. Bruegel Policy Brief ISSUE 2016/11 - JULY 2016

Highlights: Since the mid-1990s, Italy has been characterised by a lack of labour productivity growth, combinedwith a 60 percent growth in labour costs, 20 percentage points above euro-area average consumer price growth. As a consequence, Italy has become less competitive compared to its euro-area partners, the profitability of its firms has dropped and real GDP-per-capita has flatlined. • At the root of the substantial discrepancy between wages and productivity is Italy’s system of centralised wage bargaining which, in many ways, is designed without regard for the underlying industrial structure and geographical heterogeneity of the Italian economy.This has fostered perverse incentives and imbalances within Italy. • Collective wage bargaining, and in particular the determination of base salaries, should be moved from the national to the regional level for all contracts, in the public and private sectors.The Mezzogiorno,which might superficially be seen as losing out from this policy, would actually gain the most in competitiveness terms. • Furthermore, measures should be taken so that, in the long run, the Italian industrial structure evolves into a less fragmented small-company-based economy. This firm consolidation would likely expand the use of firm-level agreements and performance payments, and would improve Italy’s productivity and competitiveness overall.