12. Notes that for years the Chinese banking system has been growing rapidly; that this has been accompanied by a gradual opening of the banking and financial sector to foreign interests; that this is taking place in accordance with the basic principles of the WTO Agreement and the transitional periods granted to China when it joined the WTO; that many Chinese commercial banks have already been authorised to work with foreign lenders; that, finally, more than 400 international banks and financial institutions have opened branches or representations in China; calls on China to continue this process, further to relax the remaining restrictions on foreign banks as regards customer transaction ...[+++]s, areas of business and regional activities and ultimately to dismantle them altogether in order to create greater scope for development for foreign banks or banks with foreign capital participation; calls on China, furthermore, to allow all foreign or mixed banks to conduct customer transactions in the Renminbi, and, in the near future to lift all restrictions on Renminbi transactions by foreign banks throughout China; calls on China, furthermore, in addition to relaxing market access rules for foreign or mixed banks implemented introduced so far, also to relax controls on external financial institutions and, in this connection, to reduce the capital requirements for the establishment of foreign financial institutions from the present excessively high level so as to allow these undertakings effective market access;

Under the new rules, and in respect of the principles of a customs union, it should not make a difference whether a customs transaction affects only the territory of one Member State or that of several Member States.

[17] This action, although not a necessary condition for the creation of a paperless environment for customs, would facilitate electronic treatment of customs transactions.

The increased volume of trade, the speed required for the release of goods, as well as the fact that commercial import and export data are normally available in electronic form before the actual customs transaction make it necessary to review the roles of the frontier and the inland customs offices.

Benefits: Traders who already do customs transactions electronically, are accustomed to the IT system of the MS in which they are established.

In a 1998 report, the ECB argues that if "electronic money schemes offer the possibility of executing anonymous transfers of large amounts of money, they could be increasingly used for .criminal purposes" and that market forces alone might foster the development of those schemes which are "attractive" for money laundering purposes (anonymity of transactions, possibility to make customer-to-customer transactions, impossibility to trace individual transactions).