4. Where national law permits, and with the express consent of the competent authorities which issued its authorization, a credit institution excluded from a deposit-guarantee scheme may continue to take deposits if, before its exclusion, it has made alternative guarantee arrangements which ensure that depositors will enjoy a level and scope of protection at least equivalent to that offered by the officially recognized scheme.

[Only where applicable:] Your deposit is covered by a contractual scheme officially recognised as a Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

In July 2010, the Commission proposed to go further, with a harmonisation and simplification of protected deposits, faster pay-outs and improved financing of schemes, notably through ex-ante funding of deposit guarantee schemes and a mandatory mutual borrowing facility between the national schemes. The idea behind this is that if a national deposit guarantee scheme finds itself depleted, it can borrow from another national fund.

The ESC recommends: - a further preventative analysis of protection systems complementary to the patent, to be described as "utility models" (UM), together with a more complete integration of available assessment data; special regard to be paid in this connection to weaknesses in the EU patent system, which is still seriously incomplete and disparate compared to its main competitors, the USA and Japan; - a guarantee, in the event of proposals for harmonization, not only of measures for the harmonization of substantive laws, but also of procedures and timescales for obtaining and enforcing UMs, together with the introduction of a cheap, ...[+++] quick and easy (especially for SMEs) assessment and enforcement method which excludes substances and processes from eligibility for protection; - a guarantee of eligibility for UMs for innovations which satisfy the following requirements: a) "absolute novelty"; b) "possibility of application in the industrial field"; c) "inventive step" (Art. 56 of the Convention on the European Patent) or which have a practical industrial advantage over the previous state of the art; the scope of protection should emerge from a limited number of "claims" and the search for earlier "state of the art" should be optional in general, and compulsory for those wishing to enforce UM rights vis-à-vis a third party; - investigation into the feasibility of active assistance and advice in respect of national UM deposit and registration procedures being provided for firms - particularly SMEs - by a central Community or European agency; and investigation of the scope for application of computer digital language to the European patent system; - deferral of any measures for mutual recognition until substantive and interpretative harmonization has taken place; a feasibility study on creation of a Community UM covering the whole of Europe could be carried out, but only after a thorough examination to check that harmonization and mutual recognition measures ...

The proposed Directive on deposit guarantee schemes will provide for a basic level of consumer protection - at least 15,000 ECU - for all depositors with Community banks in all twelve Member States.

Following the specific amendments agreed by the Commission, the proposal now: - makes clear that a credit institution that also acted as an investment firm could belong to a single compensation scheme as long as the scheme met the requirements of both the deposit-guarantee Directive and the investor compensation Directive - incorporates equivalent clauses to the bank deposit-guarantee Directive concerning the possibility for branches to opt-in to higher levels of compensation in the host country ('top-up'), the regime for branches of firms with their head office in a non-EU country (Member States must ensure home countries schemes offer equivalent cover or oblige branches to join the host country scheme) and the principle that schemes shoul ...[+++]d be financed by investment firms themselves - includes revised definitions of "investment firm" and "branch" which refer to the definitions in the Investment Services Directive and a new definition of "joint investment" - clarifies that authorisation for investment firms is based on the principle of home country control and that no investment firm (other than credit institutions exempted under the deposit-guarantee Directive) could operate unless it participated in an investor compensation scheme - simplifies the definition of when and how the amount of an investor's claim should be determined - makes a specific reference to the exclusion from compensation of any transaction in connection with which there has been a conviction for money-laundering as defined by the Directive on the issue (91/308/EEC) - includes a requirement for continued coverage by the compensation scheme even when a firm's authorisation to operate has been withdrawn (in case it should subsequently transpire that the firm was unable to meet its commitments to investors) - requires the Commission to report on the Directive's operation three years after it is due to be implemented (31.12.96) rather than five years after.