Development of legal regulation for securities markets in European Union

The Financial Services Action Plan (from now on the FSAP), represent harmonization in core securities regulation meters, which was implemented through European Community (EC) legislative measures since 1999. The FSAP mainly focused on financial services, securities and company low issues and was implemented in the following five years through a steady flow of new European Community legislative measures. These include harmonization measures in core securities regulation matters, such as securities offerings, insider trading and market manipulation, takeover bids, and mandatory disclosure. The main purpose of the FSAP was to provide the legal bedrock for EU financial markets' integration through uniform rules that, while providing a high level of investor protection, at the same time lower the costs that otherwise stem from the joint application of differing Member States' regimes to cross-border transactions. To reduce these costs two non-alternative and possibly complementary strategies are available: harmonization of substantive rules across the EU and harmonization of conflict of laws rules so as to avoid the joint application of more than one regime to the same cross-border transaction (the multiplejurisdiction problem). Main purpose of this paper is to assess whether the post-FSAP regulatory framework within the EU has achieved its goals in terms of uniformity and solution of the multiple-jurisdiction problem.