The initiative to harmonise banking and financial services law within the European Communities, ongoing since 1977, has been largely successful. Practitioners in every EU State today use pertinent EC directives and regulations on a daily basis. Yet, surprisingly, this new resource is a practical guide to the entire field of EC law in this area. The CD-ROM enclosed with this book provides the full official versions of all directives and regulations published by the European Commission in the fields of banking and financial services. The book which complements this primary material approaches the subject thematically, considering in turn banking supervision, securities, company law, consumer protection, taxation of capital transactions, payment systems, measures to combat financial crime, civil procedure, and other areas. For each of these distinct areas of practice it offers such essential guidance as the following: concise summary of the law as it stands; overview of laws binding and in force; pending legislation not yet approved; issues under discussion in the Parliament and the Commission; legislative history; and, how EC laws appear in national legislation. Annexes reprint the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) of 1999 and the texts and schemes for the Lamfalussy procedure and the codecision procedure. Texts on the CD-ROM include such fundamental documents as the First Banking Directive (1977), the Financial Conglomerates Directive, the Stock Exchange Law Directive, the Insider Trading Directive, the Transparency Directive, the IAS Regulation, the Statute for a European Company, the Takeover Bids Directive, the E-Commerce Directive, the Directive and Regulation on Cross-Border Payments, the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation, the EC Merger Regulation, and the Data Protection Directive. European Banking and Financial Services Law is published in co-operation with the European Association of Public Banks, which represents banks and municipal financial firms throug