(10) One of the key practices hindering the functioning of the internal market in card and card-based payments is the widespread existence of interchange fees, which are in most Member States not subject to any legislation.

28. Calls on the Commission to propose a better SEPA governance, covering the organisational setup related to the development of the main features of payment services and of the implementation of the requirements which need to be met, and allowing the development of technical and security standards to be organised separately in support of the implementation of the related legislation; calls for a more balanced representation of all stakeholders in the further development of common technical and security standards for payment schemes; urges the Commission to answer its previous calls for reform of SEPA governance so as to ensure better representation of payment services users in the decision-making and standard-setting process; notes that ...[+++] these stakeholders ay include – but are not necessarily restricted to – the EPC, consumer organisations, merchant organisations and large retail chains, the European Banking Authority (EBA), the Commission, experts in various fields, non-banking payment service providers, and mobile, internet and card commerce and mobile network operators; calls on these stakeholders to arrange their work under a new governance structure where the SEPA Council has a role; considers that the SEPA Council should be assisted by various technical committees, or ‘task forces’ for e-payment, m-payment, cards, cash and other standardisation issues, and by ad hoc working groups; recalls the Commission's commitment, in the declaration on SEPA governance on the adoption of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012, to come up with proposal before the end of 2012; calls on European standardisation bodies such as the European Committee for Standardisation (Comité Européen de Normalisation, CEN) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), in cooperation with the Commission, to play a more active role in standardising card payments;

28. Calls on the Commission to propose a better SEPA governance, covering the organisational setup related to the development of the main features of payment services and of the implementation of the requirements which need to be met, and allowing the development of technical and security standards to be organised separately in support of the implementation of the related legislation; calls for a more balanced representation of all stakeholders in the further development of common technical and security standards for payment schemes; urges the Commission to answer its previous calls for reform of SEPA governance so as to ensure better representation of payment services users in the decision-making and standard-setting process; notes that ...[+++] these stakeholders ay include – but are not necessarily restricted to – the EPC, consumer organisations, merchant organisations and large retail chains, the European Banking Authority (EBA), the Commission, experts in various fields, non-banking payment service providers, and mobile, internet and card commerce and mobile network operators; calls on these stakeholders to arrange their work under a new governance structure where the SEPA Council has a role; considers that the SEPA Council should be assisted by various technical committees, or ‘task forces’ for e-payment, m-payment, cards, cash and other standardisation issues, and by ad hoc working groups; recalls the Commission's commitment, in the declaration on SEPA governance on the adoption of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012, to come up with proposal before the end of 2012; calls on European standardisation bodies such as the European Committee for Standardisation (Comité Européen de Normalisation, CEN) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), in cooperation with the Commission, to play a more active role in standardising card payments;

The Rapporteur would like to pay a particular attention at this stage mainly to card payments and to the following elements: standardisation, cross-border acquiring, multilateral interchange fees (MIFs), co-badging, surcharges and the security of payments.

Together with the major international credit card companies, I am also looking into the possibility of blocking the credit cards of those who access paedophile websites for the purposes of buying pornographic material involving children.

At the moment COGENE is mapping major national research funding sources and the most important infrastructures for genomes research within the COGENE forum member countries.