Mutual Administrative and Legal Assistance

Authorities must be able to respond efficiently to criminal patterns and developments. Within the EEA, mutual legal assistance is based on multilateral and bilateral treaties such as the Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceedings from Crime and the Schengen agreements. Information on tax matters is generally based on bilateral treaties in the form of double taxation agreements and tax information exchange agreements, inter alia aiming to prevent tax evasion. To improve tax assistance, the OECD has recently elaborated a global standard on automatic exchange of information which has been signed by the member states. Furthermore, the administrative assistance relating to the financial market (Market Abuse Directive, Banking Directive), the administrative assistance relating to insurance (Solvency II) and the administrative assistance relating to funds (UCITS IV, AIFMD), has become very relevant. Having faced the financial market crisis, new developments in administrative assistance in European financial market supervision became necessary. The European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA) have not yet been incorporated into the EEA framework. They were established to create a level playing field and providing high protection to depositors, investors and consumers through guidelines, regulations and technical standards.