General information

On Friday 30 September 2016 the Groningen Centre for European Financial Services Law held its inaugural international conference on the topic ‘Towards Sustainable Financial Services in the EU: Making Sense of the Trend’. It took pace at the Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam , the Netherlands.

The conference aimed to contribute to developing an overarching vision on sustainable financial services post-crisis and designing a legal framework that would enable financial institutions to provide such services. For this purpose it created a platform for the debate on this topic from the theoretical and practical perspective by bringing together leading academics, financial supervisors, legal practitioners, as well representatives of consumer associations and the financial services industry.

While the general discussion took place at the plenary sessions, specific post-crisis developments were debated during two rounds of two parallel sessions. The issues that were discussed in the parallel sessions included: 1) financial supervision of behaviour and culture within financial institutions and the suitability/integrity check for top bankers under European and Dutch law; 2) financial supervision and civil liability in mass damage cases, in particular the interest rate swaps mis-sellings in the Netherlands and the UK; 3) the role of financial supervisory authorities in ensuring compliance with EU and Dutch principles-based regulation; and 4) financial product governance/intervention and civil liability in European and comparative perspective.

For more information, please see the conference report, the conference programme, and the speaker profiles.