1. The competent authorities of the Member States concerned shall collaborate closely in order to supervise the activities of institutions operating, in particular through a branch, in one or more Member States other than that in which their head offices are situated.

Its tasks should also include promoting supervisory convergence and providing advice to the Union institutions in the areas of banking, payments, e-money regulation and supervision, and related corporate governance, auditing and financial reporting issues.

59. Welcomes the cooperation among national supervisory authorities aimed at putting supervisory resources to better use, developing supervisory practice, and lightening the burden that supervision imposes on the market; is positive about colleges of supervisors dealing with multi-jurisdictional financial conglomerates and about the operational networking project that CEBS has recently initiated; calls on the colleges of supervisors to foster a common European supervisory culture and determine exactly where the limits of such voluntary cooperation lie when real crisis situations appear; notes, however, that these colleges lack the nat ...[+++]ional mandates to transfer competences, to accept majority decisions, or simply to put sufficient resources and expertise into the colleges' work; thus points out the necessity of defining a framework and national mandates for cooperation and expects the colleges of supervisors and the operational networking project to provide necessary practical solutions (memoranda of understanding) for the supervision of cross-border groups within a short time frame;

The Council of Europe has urged the Member States gradually to introduce alternatives to imprisonment (conditional or early release, intensive or electronic surveillance, shorter sentences, pardons, amnesties, halfway-house arrangements, parole, work outside prison, open regimes, treatment outside prison, day release arrangements) and to custodial sentences (decriminalisation and decarceration, suspended sentences, community work, fines, driving bans, confiscation of assets, house arrest, bans on carrying on a particular activity).

3. Every Member State shall take all steps necessary to ensure that the competent authorities have the powers and means necessary for the supervision of the business of assurance undertakings with head offices within their territories, including business carried on outside those territories, in accordance with the Council directives governing those activities and for the purpose of seeing that they are implemented.

Some of the core elements of this directive are the binding provisions concerning the participation of employees’ representatives, the information and consultation requirements within the administrative or supervisory bodies and the obligation to obtain authorisation before implementing decisions such as shutting down or relocating establishments, cutting back or expanding establishments, changing establishments, the establishment of subsidiaries or holding companies. Election procedures and the working methods of employees’ representatives should follow normal practice in the Member State concerned.