EU

Towards a Single Payments Area through regulation?

Amparo San José. Centre for European Policy Studies. amparo.sanjose@ceps.be

A single currency environment demands a single payment area, where transferring money from one country to another can be done under the same conditions than transfer within one country. With that aim, the European Commission has recently proposed, on 24th July 2001, a regulation on cross-border payment in euro ¹ . Nevertheless, it is not a recent issue, as it has been the target of different initiatives for the past ten years. Since 1990, a single payment area is one of the objectives of the European Commission as reflected in the Green Paper “Making payments in the internal market” ² , followed by Directive 97/5 to provide a harmonised legal framework to improve the efficiency of cross border payments.