New legislative initiatives at the Community level should be kept to a minimum and only introduced if strictly necessary. In this respect, the implementation of the Lamfalussy framework represents a unique opportunity to achieve a consistent regulatory and supervisory framework for financial services. Indeed, the experience so far gained with the implementation of the framework in the securities field is broadly positive.
Indeed, outstanding loans to small businesses dropped from almost $ billion in the second quarter of 2008 to approximately $ billion in the first quarter of 2010. 1 An important but difficult-to-answer question is how much of this reduction has been driven by weaker demand for loans from small businesses and how much by restricted credit availability.