Smart TVs will be forced to power up more slowly under plans to align Britain with the EU's Net Zero rules capping the power usage of devices on standby.
The post Smart TVs to Switch on More Slowly Under EU Net Zero Rules appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Czech government has taken a further step towards fundamentally restructuring the country’s public broadcasting system, pushing controversial legislation through its first parliamentary reading after an extraordinary overnight session that triggered demonstrations and clashes with police in Prague.
In the early hours of Saturday, 24 October, the Chamber of Deputies advanced a government proposal abolishing licence fees for Czech Television (ČT) and Czech Radio (ČRo), replacing them with direct financing from the state budget. Opposition attempts to reject the legislation or return it for revision failed.
The decision represents another stage in the confrontation between Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s governing coalition and organisations defending independent public broadcasting. Critics argue that the proposed financial arrangements could give successive governments greater leverage over the country’s principal public service media institutions.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside parliament on Prague’s Malostranské Square on Friday, protesting against the legislation and the government’s decision to accelerate its parliamentary consideration.
According to the Czech News Agency’s account of the demonstrations, several dozen protesters attempted to force their way into the parliamentary building. Officers from a special police unit prevented their entry.
Police spokeswoman Eva Kropáčová confirmed that the situation was brought under control without arrests. Demonstrators also confronted SPD parliamentarian Jaroslav Foldyna, requiring police intervention.
Inside parliament, the governing coalition of ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists party imposed limits on parliamentary debate and scheduled the decisive vote for 4.36am.
Of the 177 MPs present, 81 supported rejecting the proposal. The opposition subsequently pledged to continue resisting the legislation during its remaining parliamentary stages.
The central controversy concerns the proposed transfer of financial responsibility for public broadcasters from licence-fee payers to the state.
Under the government’s plan, Czech Television would receive approximately CZK 5.74 billion annually, while Czech Radio would receive CZK 2.07 billion.
Combined funding would amount to approximately CZK 7.8 billion, representing a reduction of around CZK 1.4 billion, or 15 per cent, compared with existing licence-fee revenues.
Culture Minister Oto Klempíř, who developed the proposal, maintains that budget financing is an established European model. The government argues that abolishing the combined CZK 205 monthly household charge would reduce costs for consumers without compromising editorial independence.
However, the dispute extends beyond the immediate financial reductions.
Under the existing system, licence fees provide broadcasters with revenue that is substantially separated from annual government spending decisions. Financing through the state budget introduces a different relationship between broadcasters and political authorities.
Even where allocations are established by legislation, future parliamentary majorities can amend the law governing those payments.
A particularly significant development emerged on Saturday when an examination of the government’s own legislative documentation showed that its regulatory impact assessment had identified direct budget financing as the riskiest funding option.
The accompanying documents explicitly acknowledge the possibility of increased dependence on the state and political pressure without adequate safeguards.
The controversy has attracted criticism from international organisations responsible for defending independent journalism.
In a joint statement issued on 23 October, the European Broadcasting Union, Reporters Without Borders, International Press Institute and other organisations warned that the accelerated parliamentary process was incompatible with the thorough scrutiny required for such legislation.
They highlighted the proposed funding reductions and questioned whether the new arrangements would sufficiently protect the broadcasters’ operational and editorial independence.
Their objections have a specific legal foundation.
Article 5 of the European Media Freedom Act requires EU member states to provide public service broadcasters with adequate, sustainable and predictable financing, based on transparent and objective criteria.
Budget financing is not prohibited under EU legislation. However, financial arrangements must contain safeguards against political interference.
As EU Today previously examined, the European Media Freedom Act establishes legally binding obligations intended to prevent governments from undermining independent journalism through institutional or financial pressure.
The Czech proposal therefore raises questions about whether its safeguards and funding provisions satisfy those requirements.
Employees of Czech Television and Czech Radio have announced a nationwide strike for Tuesday, 3 November, organised by the Veřejnoprávně initiative.
The industrial action follows an earlier warning strike in June, when journalists and other broadcasting employees protested against the government’s plans.
A further public demonstration is scheduled for Sunday, 25 October, in Prague’s Old Town Square.
The confrontation also reflects the broader political divisions that have emerged since Babiš returned to government in December 2025.
Opposition politicians have drawn comparisons with political intervention in public broadcasting elsewhere in Central Europe, particularly Hungary and Slovakia.
The government rejects accusations that it intends to nationalise public broadcasters or interfere with their editorial decisions.
For the moment, the legislation remains subject to parliamentary scrutiny and has not become law. Its passage would nevertheless change the financial relationship between the Czech state and two of the country’s most established news institutions.
The central question is whether future governments would acquire additional means of influencing broadcasters through their budgets, even without exercising direct control over individual editorial decisions.
Show features live chat sessions with breeders, a podcast and updates on dogs’ progress from birth to weigh-ins
A 24-hour Finnish TV show dedicated entirely to the live progress of a dog and her six newborn puppies is drawing millions of viewers.
As well as a 24-hour webcam, Pentulive (Puppy Live) includes live evening chat sessions with the dogs’ breeder, a podcast and an instant notification service that updates followers on the puppies’ progress – from their birth to weigh-ins and first nail trims – for eight weeks.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP
© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP
© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP
© CBS, via Getty Images
The agreement, announced on Wednesday, 21st October, follows negotiations between the Council and European Parliament over changes to prudential requirements and the regulation governing securitised financial products.
The reform package agreed by EU negotiators would reduce capital requirements for lower-risk transactions, introduce a new category of resilient securitisations and simplify administrative procedures for financial institutions and investors.
It forms part of the EU’s Savings and Investments Union initiative, which aims to channel more private capital into the European economy.
Securitisation allows banks and other lenders to combine financial assets, including mortgages, consumer credit and corporate loans, into securities that can be purchased by investors.
By transferring some of the financial risks associated with these assets, banks can reduce the amount of regulatory capital they are required to maintain against particular exposures.
This can increase their capacity to extend new loans, although it does not guarantee that additional lending will follow.
The provisional agreement would recalibrate capital requirements according to the risk of individual transactions.
Lower-risk securitisations would receive more favourable treatment, while higher capital requirements would continue to apply to riskier structures.
A new category of resilient securitisations would be introduced alongside the existing framework for simple, transparent and standardised transactions, commonly known as STS securitisations.
The agreement would also strengthen supervision of independent organisations responsible for verifying compliance with the STS criteria.
The Council said that third-party verifiers would become subject to EU-level supervision, with the aim of improving consistency across national markets.
The reforms address a long-standing concern that European banks face higher administrative and capital costs for securitisation than competitors operating under other regulatory systems.
Following the financial crisis of 2008, European authorities introduced tighter rules governing structured financial products, including restrictions intended to improve transparency and ensure that lenders retained appropriate exposure to credit risks.
The resulting framework, which began applying in 2019, strengthened investor protection but also increased compliance costs.
The European Commission proposed the latest review in June 2025, arguing that the existing arrangements had constrained the development of securitisation as a financing tool.
According to the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, approximately €252.3 billion in securitised products was issued across Europe in 2025, with €156.3 billion placed with investors.
Those figures cover the wider European market, including activity outside the EU.
Brussels regards the development of deeper financial markets as necessary to finance infrastructure, technological investment and industrial development.
As EU Today previously reported, the EU’s largest economies have also been examining proposals to strengthen supervision and reduce fragmentation across European capital markets.
The potential benefits of securitisation are not automatic.
Research published by economists on the European Central Bank’s website in September 2026 found that banks using synthetic securitisation increased corporate lending only modestly, while also distributing more capital to shareholders.
Synthetic securitisation allows banks to transfer credit risk to investors without necessarily removing the underlying loans from their balance sheets.
The researchers found that a one per cent increase in synthetic securitisation issuance was associated with an increase of approximately 0.02 per cent in corporate loan growth.
Their findings also indicated that banks participating in the synthetic securitisation market made greater use of capital released through these transactions to increase dividend payments.
The study suggests that easing capital requirements alone may not generate the substantial expansion in business lending envisaged by European policymakers.
Credit demand, economic conditions and banks’ commercial decisions will also influence whether the reforms produce measurable increases in investment financing.
The provisional agreement includes additional measures intended to encourage participation by institutional investors.
Investment limits for certain regulated funds, known as UCITS, would be increased, while targeted changes would allow insurers and reinsurers greater participation in specified synthetic securitisation transactions.
The package also seeks to facilitate securitisation arrangements used to finance infrastructure projects before they become operational.
Together, these provisions could widen the investor base and make financing structures available to a broader range of businesses and projects.
However, transferring credit exposure between banks and investors does not eliminate the underlying risk.
If borrowers default or the financial institutions providing protection encounter difficulties, losses may still emerge within the wider financial system.
European regulators will therefore have to assess whether the new classification and supervisory arrangements adequately reflect the risks of different securitisation products.
The political agreement now requires legal finalisation and formal approval by the Council and European Parliament.
The new arrangements would then form part of the EU’s wider programme to strengthen financial markets and reduce barriers to investment across the single market.
Ukraine receives Western weapons, but the code that teaches soldiers to aim them is increasingly its own. Developers of the Ukrainian battlefield reconnaissance and coordination system ComBat Vision have released a new plugin that turns the abstract math of artillery fire into a visual tool, letting crews simulate firing and learn to adjust it, the team says.
The developers built the tool around a problem they name plainly: the quality of specialists entering the military is falling rapidly.
“Artillery soldiers are sometimes yesterday’s TikTokers or "tanks" players,” the team explain, so the plugin makes firing and aiming as visual as possible to teach indirect fire quickly.
On screen, it draws a round’s flight path from the weapon’s firing tables and the dispersion ellipse for that gun and munition, warns of obstacles on the calculated trajectory, and simulates the shell after the shot with a training error added. It then shows real or simulated bursts, averages the correction across a series of hits, and lets the user enter corrections, including by voice, and watch the result.
The plugin draws its ballistics from MyGun, an app by Yaroslav Sherstiuk that automates ballistic and fire calculations for artillery. ComBat Vision itself coordinates troops and shares object data, integrating with optical sensors such as drones, ground robots and security cameras to fix targets in space.
ComBat Vision’s bigger move is becoming a platform rather than a single app. The developers say they will open a plugin store within a week, where units can download the new artillery feature and others, such as repeater-coverage calculations and remote control of minefields.
The team has announced plans to open it, not results from using it, so its payoff, letting one platform add new tools without building a separate system each time, is a claim to watch rather than a proven gain.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Be careful when you're behind the wheel this week.
College football is great! Surely you want even more of it, right? We'll get into the problems with a 24-team College Football Playoff (CFP), then talk about the NBA's new betting restrictions, and close with thoughts about President Donald Trump's new government golf course plans. And just in case you don't make it to the end, here's a shortcut to our survey on who you're rooting for in the World Series.
But first, many congratulations to "Gary's 1st Entry" on outlasting everyone else in our NFL Survivor group. There's no prize other than this shoutout, so be sure to print out today's newsletter, highlight this paragraph, and frame it in gold. Perhaps Gary can keep going and challenge Primetime Paulie Rothrock's 13-game winning streak from last season.
I figured out how ESPN calculates fantasy football win percentage, it's bad!
ESPN made a stats 101 error when calculating their win percentage which leads to horribly miscalibrated numbers. (
— Will (@will_j_5) October 18, 2026
Saturday was one of the best days of college football ever—or perhaps it could have been, if we thought any of the five top-10 teams who took a loss were now certainly out of playoff contention. Instead, Georgia, Notre Dame, Indiana, Alabama, and Texas are all still very much alive in the championship hunt.
Today was one of the craziest days in college football history:
- First time ever five teams ranked in the top 7 lose in a single week
- First time the No. 1-ranked team loses to an unranked team in consecutive weeks since 1990
- First time Texas, Alabama, and Georgia all lose… pic.twitter.com/psVRoM5s5b— Bobby Football (@Rob__Paul) October 18, 2026
With two losses, Alabama and Texas are at least on the edge of the playoff bubble with perhaps no more room for error. But that's only true under this year's CFP format. Next year, the playoff is almost officially set to balloon to 24 teams, making the chaos of a day like Saturday matter even less.
Fans will always celebrate a huge upset or major rivalry win, of course—Tennessee fans don't need playoff stakes as an excuse to get drunk when they beat Alabama. But the joy of a rivalry win in the past was always bigger because of the off-field stakes, too—the first loss for your rival meant they probably wouldn't be national champions, the second meant they'd be out of the Rose Bowl, a third meant you could be proud your team sent them packing for the Alamo Bowl. Winning is great; ruining your rival's season is even better.
With 24 teams in the playoff, the joy is a bit diminished because it will take four or possibly five losses to knock a powerhouse program out of the CFP (Iowa, at 8–4, was ranked 23rd by the committee before last year's playoffs). It'll be a bit like a rivalry win in college basketball—we win, you suck, congrats on getting a slightly worse NCAA Tournament seed.
In the business of sports, more inventory for TV is king, and the powers that be think more teams playing more playoff games will make more money. At Free Agent, we don't begrudge institutions for trying to make more money—we all do the same every day. But it's not clear abandoning conference championship games will be the answer, especially when the Big Ten and SEC championships apparently outdraw many playoff games.
ESPN and the power conferences know fans aren't happy about it—just look at all the chatter online, and how the crowd at BYU reacted when College GameDay discussed expansion on Saturday (especially when BYU would probably benefit from expansion!). They're betting enough people will watch to make the expansion profitable anyway. The last hope is that fans get loud enough to bully them into abandoning expansion—which only occasionally works, sometimes on things small (putting the trophy logo on the court for the NBA Finals) and large (soccer's European Super League). If any powerhouse considers going independent, that might shock leaders into a rethink too.
Almost every sport I know is adding more: more teams, bigger playoffs, more for TV. As fans, we still eat it up, of course—much to the excitement of the TV executives who are selling commercial time to the people trying to reach us, the viewing public. (The only counterexample is the MLB proposal to cut eight games from the regular season—I'd love to see each sport I follow cut its season by about 25 percent to make regular season games matter more, so I'm interested to see how this goes.)
Perhaps I'm biased because my favorite team, Michigan State, is a dumpster fire—they could expand the playoff to 64 teams and the Spartans still wouldn't deserve a bid. I personally don't have a whole lot at stake in the playoff format now or anytime soon. But as a neutral, the chaos of Saturday might have been viewed with my full attention in the past—instead, this year I just had it on in the background while I played video games.
After last year's major betting scandal, the NBA asked sportsbooks late last week to stop offering certain types of potentially problematic bets. The sportsbooks, which the NBA says handle roughly 99 percent of the U.S. betting market, agreed. No politician or regulation was necessary to solve the problem.
No longer can bettors bet on unders for a bit player who likely won't get more than 12 minutes of playtime. Bettors also can't wager on the opening tip or on players to miss specific shots. Parlays that string together under bets on the same player's statistics are also out (this one seems a bit harsh—if you just want to bet on a certain major player to have an off night, you can bet on stats separately, but not in a big multiplier parlay). Bets on players who have two-way contracts between the NBA and G League were already banned.
This all comes on the heels of similar developments last year in the NFL and MLB. While some people want to ban prop bets altogether, the NFL asked sportsbooks to eliminate bets in four different categories. Sportsbooks largely agreed or weren't offering those bets anyway. MLB, in light of some pitching-related scandals, asked for a $200 limit on pitch-specific bets and to keep them out of parlays—sportsbooks agreed to that too.
As I wrote last year, "Ideally, this is how the regulation of the sports betting industry should go….These approaches are catching the nuances of what works for both the leagues and for sportsbooks without the heavy-handed approaches of politicians who would use an axe to ban all prop bets instead of a scalpel to limit problematic bets."
It's important to note leagues are able to do this because they have commercial partnerships with the sportsbooks. Otherwise, the leagues would have no direct leverage over a sportsbook offering a bet the league doesn't like. Keep that in mind the next time you see people bemoaning a league partnership with a sportsbook or a prediction market.
President Donald Trump has new plans for the National Park Service golf course at East Potomac—again. Last time new plans were announced, the site plan still had its historic miniature golf course, a par-3 course, and the existing road still ringing the property for bicycling, running, etc. Much of the public didn't like that plan anyway—now, none of that remains in the latest plans, just 18 holes of golf and a driving range.
Trump announces plans for the redeveloped East Potomac Park golf course. pic.twitter.com/ZiGYgc99Uo
— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) October 18, 2026
What's really going on here seems quite clear to me: Like so many other things going on in the second Trump administration, this is a scheme to enrich the Trump family. The plan?
Step 1: Cancel a lease that was signed during the first Trump administration with a nonprofit group operating the golf course and working, in the long term, on major capital improvements and renovations.
Step 2: Use taxpayer dollars to pay for renovation of the course into, allegedly, a championship-level course capable of hosting major golf tournaments (no matter that the area has next to zero parking, is a mile from the nearest Metro station, and only accessible by narrow roads not meant to handle tens of thousands of spectators).
Step 3: Have the federal government sign a sweetheart deal with, who else, the golf division of the Trump Organization to operate the course on extremely favorable and profitable terms.
If you're wondering why the Trump administration is doing something, corruption is usually a good guess.
The arguments for the course don't make much sense. There are plenty of adequate, competitively priced golf courses in the broader Washington, D.C., area. Several of them are already capable of hosting professional golf tournaments. Between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, there were three tournaments at three different courses in the last couple years. The 2030 PGA Championship and 2037 Ryder Cup will happen just over the D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland.
East Potomac is not the nicest course around, no thanks to the legal limbo it's been in for the past year. But if the National Park Service is going to, for some reason, be in the business of running a golf course, it should be a course that emphasizes and teaches its history instead of the pipe dream of a corrupt madman.
For the first time in 46 years, we've got a World Series contested by two teams that have never won it before. Brewers against Rays is also a rare instance of the top seeds from each league outlasting the randomness of the MLB playoffs to make the World Series. And before you trot out the tired line that "TV executives must be seething about the small market teams" remember that they care much more about getting a playoff series that goes seven games with close results in each game (What did I say above? Inventory rules all!).
In any case, I want to know who you're rooting for. At first glance, neither team seems super objectionable to me. Come back next week for my thoughts. But make sure you sound off and take 10 seconds to respond to our World Series poll here.
Kick-six alert! (Honorable mention to the blocked extra point returned for two the other way.)
"A kick-six type opportunity."
Chris Lewis was all over this one on the CBS Sports Network call of Nevada-North Dakota State.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 18, 2026
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend: MSU men's hockey (No. 2 in the nation!) against New Hampshire.
The post Fans Don't Want a 24-Team College Football Playoff. The NCAA Thinks You'll Watch Anyway. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The European Union’s General Court has rejected a legal challenge to the European Commission’s classification of adult entertainment platform Stripchat under the Digital Services Act, strengthening Brussels’ authority to determine which online services must comply with the legislation’s most demanding obligations.
In its judgment delivered on 14th October, the Luxembourg-based court dismissed the action brought by Technius Ltd, the company operating Stripchat, against its designation as a very large online platform.
The dispute centred on how the Commission calculated the platform’s average monthly active users in the European Union, which determines whether additional regulatory obligations apply.
Under the Digital Services Act, platforms exceeding 45 million monthly active recipients in the EU are subject to enhanced supervision, including requirements concerning systemic risks, transparency, content moderation and independent auditing.
The judgment addresses a fundamental question for European digital regulation: whether companies can exclude particular categories of website visits when calculating the number of people using their services.
In February 2023, Technius reported that Stripchat had approximately 31.8 million average monthly active recipients in the EU, placing it below the threshold for very large online platforms.
The company relied on information provided by Similarweb, a commercial service measuring website traffic and user behaviour.
However, the Commission questioned the methodology used to reach that figure. Technius had discounted certain visits on the grounds that users entered the website but departed without engaging with its content.
Such visits are commonly described as bounced visits and frequently appear in commercial website analytics.
The Commission concluded that the company’s deductions had significantly underestimated its audience because the original Similarweb calculation of unique visitors already incorporated a filtering process excluding many bounced visits.
On that basis, Brussels calculated that Stripchat had more than 62 million monthly unique visitors in the EU, well above the statutory threshold.
The Commission consequently designated the platform as a very large online service on 20th December 2023. Technius challenged the decision, arguing that the figures were unreliable and that the absence of a prescribed calculation methodology undermined legal certainty.
The EU General Court rejected both arguments.
According to the court’s official explanation, the Commission had adequately explained its calculation and was entitled to rely on the data available when the designation decision was adopted.
The judges found that Technius had effectively applied deductions to figures from which relevant traffic had already been filtered, producing an artificially reduced estimate of active recipients.
The judgment also addressed a potentially significant complication.
After the Commission adopted its decision, Similarweb revised its methodology. Using the corrected method, Stripchat’s estimated monthly active audience for the relevant period was approximately 37.3 million.
That figure was below the threshold for classification as a very large online platform. Nevertheless, the court held that the subsequent correction did not invalidate the original designation.
The judges determined that the Commission’s decision had to be assessed according to the facts, applicable law and permissible evidence available when the decision was taken.
The ruling therefore does not establish that Stripchat currently exceeds 45 million monthly users. It confirms that the later recalculation was insufficient to annul the Commission’s December 2023 decision.
The consequences extend beyond one adult entertainment website.
The Digital Services Act covers online intermediaries operating in the European market, including social networks, marketplaces, hosting services and other platforms.
Its obligations increase according to the size and nature of a company’s operations. Very large online platforms must assess systemic risks associated with their services, introduce appropriate mitigation measures and submit to independent audits.
The Commission is responsible for supervising their additional obligations and can impose substantial financial penalties for established infringements.
The distinction between the two categories can therefore have considerable financial and operational consequences.
Companies falling below the 45 million threshold remain subject to relevant DSA obligations but do not face the same additional requirements imposed on the largest platforms.
The General Court’s ruling confirms that companies cannot escape designation by applying an unreliable interpretation of website traffic data.
At the same time, the Commission’s published supervisory framework allows a designation to be revoked when a platform remains below the threshold for a full year.
The judgment comes as the Commission faces multiple legal challenges to its enforcement of Europe’s digital legislation.
As EU Today previously reported, Washington has sought to intervene in proceedings concerning the Commission’s €120 million Digital Services Act fine against X, introducing an additional diplomatic dimension to European regulatory disputes.
The Commission is also pursuing separate investigations into whether major platforms comply with obligations concerning the protection of minors, advertising transparency and the management of illegal content.
In another case examined by EU Today, Brussels reached preliminary findings concerning TikTok’s default privacy settings for children, illustrating the practical consequences of the stricter duties imposed on very large online platforms.
The Stripchat judgment concerns designation rather than a finding that the company breached any substantive safety obligation. Its immediate consequence is to preserve the Commission’s original classification decision.
Technius may still appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union on points of law within two months and ten days of notification of the judgment.
For European regulators, the decision provides judicial support for using established commercial analytics when assessing the reach of online platforms, provided that the methodology is adequately explained and the underlying evidence is reliable.
For technology companies, it confirms that the legal assessment of user numbers extends beyond the figures they choose to report to Brussels. The Commission can scrutinise those calculations and reject methods that fail to provide a reliable estimate of an online service’s European audience.
European Union finance ministers have reached an agreement to expand centralised supervision of financial markets, but Germany has secured provisions allowing important parts of Deutsche Börse to remain under national oversight, substantially narrowing the European Commission’s original reform proposals.
The compromise, agreed at a meeting in Luxembourg on 9 October, would transfer responsibility for supervising selected trading venues, clearing houses and securities settlement institutions to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).
However, the agreement introduces exemptions and thresholds that reduce the number of institutions automatically subject to direct European supervision.
The result is a significant political compromise between governments seeking deeper financial integration and those reluctant to surrender oversight of nationally important market operators.
The most contentious element of the negotiations concerned Deutsche Börse, the German financial-market group that operates the Frankfurt stock exchange and provides trading, clearing and other financial infrastructure services.
Germany opposed arrangements that would place all major market operators under direct ESMA supervision, arguing that institutions with predominantly domestic activities should continue to be regulated nationally.
The agreed compromise refines the criteria for determining which trading venues qualify for centralised oversight.
These conditions allow certain Deutsche Börse operations to remain outside the new supervisory regime.
The exemption had already become a point of contention during negotiations among European governments.
As EU Today reported in June, Berlin had sought to protect Deutsche Börse from mandatory European supervision despite Germany’s broader support for integrating EU capital markets.
The October agreement formalises a narrower approach within the Council’s negotiating position, although the legislation remains subject to approval by the European Parliament.
The European Commission has repeatedly argued that fragmented national supervision weakens the EU’s ability to compete with financial markets in the United States.
Although the Union operates a single market, many financial institutions continue to face differing regulatory interpretations, procedures and supervisory relationships across member states.
These differences can increase operating costs and discourage financial businesses from expanding across borders.
The Market Integration and Supervision Package is intended to simplify those arrangements and strengthen common oversight of financial infrastructure with significant cross-border activity.
Under the Council’s position, ESMA would assume direct supervision of selected trading platforms and institutions involved in clearing and securities settlement.
Such institutions perform essential functions in financial markets, including managing transactions, transferring securities and controlling risks between counterparties.
Differences in supervisory arrangements can complicate the operation of financial services that increasingly function across national borders.
The Commission argues that greater consistency would allow European capital to move more efficiently between member states and provide businesses with improved access to investment.
The Commission’s original approach envisaged broader centralisation of supervisory responsibilities.
The Council agreement of 9 October introduces more restrictive criteria governing the institutions that would fall under ESMA’s direct authority.
In addition to the treatment of trading venues, ministers agreed that direct supervision of crypto-asset service providers should initially concentrate on businesses with the most significant cross-border operations.
The Council also supported changes to ESMA’s governance arrangements, including the creation of a full-time executive board.
The proposed board would strengthen the authority’s ability to make supervisory decisions independently of individual national regulators, while preserving mechanisms for cooperation with those authorities.
The compromise also introduces arrangements allowing national supervisors collectively to challenge certain decisions.
These provisions reflect concerns about concentrating regulatory powers within an institution that must oversee financial businesses operating under different national legal systems.
The supervision reforms form part of the EU’s broader Savings and Investments Union initiative.
European policymakers want to increase the availability of private capital for companies investing in technology, defence, infrastructure and industrial development.
The Union has substantial household savings, but much of that money remains in bank deposits or is invested outside the European economy.
Companies seeking capital for expansion may consequently face higher financing costs or more limited investment opportunities than comparable businesses operating in larger and more integrated markets.
The Commission’s Savings and Investments Union programme seeks to improve access to finance and make cross-border investment more attractive.
Financial-market supervision represents only one element of that programme.
Differences in taxation, insolvency law, national investment products and corporate governance requirements also influence where investors allocate their money.
Nevertheless, regulators regard consistent supervision as an important condition for reducing fragmentation.
The agreement reached by finance ministers does not conclude the legislative process.
The European Parliament must adopt its position before negotiations can determine the final provisions.
Parliamentary discussions could revisit the exemptions secured by Germany and the criteria determining which institutions fall under direct ESMA supervision.
The debate will expose differences over whether European financial integration should proceed through incremental reforms or a more substantial transfer of regulatory authority.
Governments supporting national exemptions argue that supervision should reflect the actual geographic scope of a company’s activities.
Supporters of broader European oversight contend that major trading businesses can influence financial markets beyond their home jurisdictions even when individual operations appear predominantly domestic.
The Deutsche Börse exemption has become a prominent example of the conflict between those positions.
Europe’s largest economies broadly support the objective of deeper capital markets, but remain divided over the institutional powers needed to achieve it.
The final legislation will determine whether the expanded responsibilities granted to ESMA are sufficient to reduce fragmentation or leave important parts of Europe’s financial infrastructure operating under substantially different national supervisory systems.
Myha’la Herrold, the Celebrity Traitors star banished on the show last week, has accused the reality TV programme of having "unconscious racial and cultural bias" in its format.
The post Banished Celebrity Traitors Star Accuses Show of “Racial Bias” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is set to sign long-delayed agreements with five oil refineries, unlocking more than $6 billion in planned upgrades to modernize aging plants and cut reliance on fuel imports, officials said. But industry warnings that changes to the financial framework could derail the projects overshadowed the announcement. The agreements with Pak-Arab Refinery Ltd., Pakistan ... Read more
The post Pakistan to sign long-delayed refinery deals unlocking more than $6 billion in planned upgrades appeared first on BOL News.
KARACHI: State-run Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) has issued a fresh tender to procure one spot cargo of liquefied natural gas for delivery between September 4 and 8, as global supply disruptions stemming from the Middle East war continue to strain the country’s gas-fired power generation. PLL invited bids from international suppliers for a single cargo ... Read more
The post Pakistan returns to spot LNG market with fresh tender as power generation takes a hit appeared first on BOL News.
Ready to test your knowledge of hue, value, and saturation? Rivka Galchen’s latest for The New Yorker is a trove of fascinating details about our understanding of color. Galchen opens with the buzziest tidbit: an experiment conducted by a vision scientist who used a laser to stimulate a selection of his own cone cells and glimpse a color unknown outside of his laboratory. From there, she roams—through philosophy and art history, from studios to pigment shops—complicating our understanding of perception with each new turn of her titular question.
In the children’s novel “The Midnight Fox,” by Betsy Byars, the main character daydreams about digging in his back yard and coming across a “brand-new color.” A friend of mine remembers being captivated by this scene, and trying to picture the color. “I felt like I could conceive of it, but I couldn’t see it,” she said. The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume considered at length whether a person who had seen every shade of blue except for one would be able to picture that one un-experienced shade; he concluded that the answer was yes. In my youth, I spent an afternoon wondering if I would have been able to imagine the fluorescent yellow of highlighter markers if I’d never seen it.
What moves the star of Jackass to risk his life for our entertainment? This “very serious investigation” involves interviews with friends and family, a surf trip to Malibu, a gag with a fake raccoon, and a stop at In-N-Out:
He nosed the car into the drive-through line, drawing stares as he nosed—some for the vehicle, some for the driver. Mostly male stares. A teen-age boy stepped up to the passenger window and leaned in to take his order.
“One hamburger with tomato, lettuce, and mustard,” Knoxville said. “Fries, please. And a cup of water.”
“Onion?”
“No, sir.”
The teen-ager squinted. “You look familiar. Are you famous, by any chance?”
“Actually, completely by chance!” Knoxville improvised.
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