10. Underlines that structural cooperation between national regulatory bodies is essential; urges, therefore, that such cooperation be expanded, with the involvement of the Commission, so as to develop common standards and take joint action against online gambling companies operating in one or more Member States without the requisite national licence(s) for all the games they offer; points to the discussions in Council as to whether, and in what way, the Internal Market Information System could contribute to more effective cooperati ...[+++]on between national regulatory bodies; states that, in particular when it comes to combating money laundering, betting fraud and other – often organised – crime, national stand-alone solutions are not successful; takes the view that cooperation between national supervisory authorities and the pooling of best practices should be promoted, and that such authorities should exchange information with the responsible authorities of other Member States in order to prevent abuses and money laundering;

This parliamentary own-initiative report reminds us ‘that a proactive approach is more effective and less costly than one based simply on reacting to disasters’ and provides a list of actions to be taken.

At the Washington Summit of 15 November 2008, the leaders of the G-20 approved an action plan to reform global financial markets following five common principles: (i) strengthening transparency and accountability of financial markets and align incentives in order to avoid excessive risk-taking; (ii) strengthen regulatory regimes, prudential oversight, and risk management, and ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate to their circumstances; (iii) promote the integrity of financial markets by bolstering investor and consumer protection, avoiding conflicts of intere ...[+++]st, preventing illegal market manipulation, fraudulent activities and abuse, and protecting against illicit finance risks arising from non-cooperative jurisdictions; (iv) reinforce global cooperation on regulation, crisis prevention, management and resolution, and (v) reforming the International Financial Institutions (i.e., the Bretton Woods Institutions) in order to increase their legitimacy and effectiveness.

National regulatory authorities shall have the right to enter into agreements with each other to foster regulatory cooperation and the actions referred to in first subparagraph shall be carried out, as appropriate, in close consultation with other relevant national authorities and without prejudice to their specific competencies.

Recognising the link between successful policy reform and sector-specific performance, the Action Plans will promote policy measures such as the institutional separation of regulatory from operational functions, by encouraging the establishment of independent regulatory authorities.

Another important action already underway which will be contributing to eEurope 2005 is to improve the use of telematics in the community pharmaceutical regulatory system (e.g. Eudravigilance for safety of medicines, Europharm Database or e-submission for information exchange between regulatory authorities and industry) which is expected to deliver first results by end 2003. eEurope offers the possibility to combine efforts into a strategy to deliver visible results at the end of the action plan.