FEBIS Regulatory Committee

Summer recess has not exactly been totally quiet in the regulatory front and the FEBIS regulatory committee is going on with a very vast agenda and roadmap of important EU issues that are followed. As outlined during the Regulatory presentation done at the FEBIS General Assembly by Mark Preston, Luis Carmona and Stephanie Verilhac, there are a lot of parallel and sometimes contradictory EU issues and initiatives going on, which have an impact for business information providers.
 
As usual, data protection remains high priority. To this end, the follow-up of the key questionnaire on the use of legitimate interest to assess the importance of the subject among its members has been presented quickly in the FEBIS GA, and members can access the report on the FEBIS website (GA materials).
 
On data-related issues, which are all of great importance, FEBIS regulatory committee flagged out the Data Governance Act, which is currently debated both in the European Parliament and in the Council, with key elements proposed from the Council on the scope, on data intermediaries or on some elements regarding access to protected public sector information.
Other key elements include the consultation on the draft Data Act, to which FEBIS regulatory committee drafted a comments paper outlining the importance of a coherent and consistent regulatory framework towards business information.  The question of the resonance effect of both the Dutch preliminary judgement on KVK and of the case of the Spanish Data Protection Authority against Equifax on GDPR compliance also remains a high priority for the Febis regulatory members.
 
FEBIS Regulatory Committee also worked on a position paper on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and submitted this during summer. The new evolution of the CSRD directive and the inclusion of new reporting standards on ESG (environment, social and governance) is also an important issue for FEBIS members.
 
Comments also arose on the issue of Artificial Intelligence, which is a key topic for FEBIS members too. After a brilliant keynote on AI done by Anthony Scriffignano, Chief Data Officer at D&B on the second day of the FEBIS meeting, the issue also raised questions during the regulatory session as the EU draft AI Act seems to go in a quite prescriptive and not future-proof direction from the outset. Analysing the impact of provisions enshrined in the draft AI Act, especially about the scope and certification mechanisms, is a key subject on the forthcoming to-do list of the FEBIS Regulatory Committee.
 
The committee also worked actively on the issue of late payments and the potential revision of the Late Payments Directive, by taking part into individual interviews with the appointed EU consultancy to do market research on late payments, on the feasibility of the European Observatory and on all the initiatives that private companies can have to help mitigate late payments.
Last but not least, the session concluded with an overview of the work done by the International Committee on Credit Reporting (ICCR), of which FEBIS is an active member, The final stage of adopting its Cross Border Information Sharing Report is on its way, which is also a key item for business information providers.

FEBIS Regulatory Committees welcomes any member who wishes to actively participate in our activities and working calls that take place every other week. For more information, please contact secretariat@febis.org