The initiative to improve the level of integration in banking and financial services law within the European Union, ongoing since the end of the sixties, has been largely successful. About 80% of the national laws regarding financial services are based on European law. A practical guide to the entire field of EU law in this area is the new resource European Banking and Financial Services Law, published by the EAPB in co-operation with Kluwer Law International. The book approaches the subject thematically, considering banking and banking supervision law, capital markets and securities law, accounting and company law, consumer law, taxation and capital transactions, payments, money laundering and financial crime, competition law, civil law and other issues. For each of these distinct areas of practice it offers such essential guidance as the following: concise summary of the law as it stands and its legislative history, overview of laws binding and in force, pending legislation not yet adopted, issues under discussion in the European Parliament and the Council, e.g. the review of the Capital Requirements, the Proposal for a Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments, the proposal for a revision of the Consumer Credit Directive, the new legal framework for payments. A CD-ROM enclosed with this book provides the full official versions of all directives and regulations published by the European Union in the fields of banking and financial services. An introduction of each chapter gives a quick overview and a description of the thematic surrounding. Texts on the CD-ROM include such fundamental documents as the Banking Directive, the Financial Conglomerates Directive, the Stock Exchange Law Directive, the Market Abuse Directive, the Prospectus Directive, the IAS Regulation, the Statute for a European Company, the Takeover Bids Directive, the E-Commerce Directive, the Directive and Regulation on Cross-Border Payments, the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, the new EC Merger Regulation and the Consumer Credit Directive. Annexes present the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) of 1999 and the descriptions and schemes for the Lamfalussy procedure as well as the Co-decision procedure.