The Joint Assessments also play a crucial role in identifying the medium-term economic policy priorities and the Accession Partnerships do likewise with regard to the establishment of priorities for EU technical assistance. Following the tremendous efforts of the last few years, we have now arrived at a stage in which there are no less than 12 applications for EU membership currently under consideration, ten of these from transition countries. Moreover six of the 12 have already begun accession negotiations. When addressing the issue of enlargement, we may ask ourselves what exactly should be required of a member state of the European Union and on what criteria should the eligibility of a candidate country be assessed? Of course, these are not usually questions asked of central bankers and it is certainly not my intention to provide answers to them. As I mentioned earlier, central bankers are not politicians. But, fortunately, there is no need for me to provide answers, since these issues have already been addressed within the context of the current enlargement process. I am referring here to the so-called “Copenhagen criteria”. As I am sure you are aware, these criteria were formulated at the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 with a view to defining a level playing field and ensuring the equal treatment of applicant states.
The seller will be obliged to make the investor — the so-called investor who is just an individual — acquainted with these documents. No less important is the law the Speaker has spoken about, setting forth the rules for selling investment financial products. This is where the Federal Antimonopoly Service could step in and make the difference. Misselling should be punishable. We are working on this draft law jointly with the Finance Ministry, and hopefully the Federation Council will in turn assist in passing it as soon as possible. A number of regulations may even need tightening there. Apart from this future law, it is our responsibility to protect investors from product offerings or financial instruments whose risks they are unable to evaluate, from products they may buy at banks on the assumption that they are buying a sort of bank deposit. That is, it turns out that people do not realise that they become retail investors when they buy these products and assume some risks. As I see it, urgent action is needed to rectify this situation. This is what we propose. The decision we are bringing up for discussion today has taken us quite some time to formulate given all the compromise solutions 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  we had to consider. We propose that direct restrictions be imposed on the sale to non-qualified investors of structured financial products, that is, products with leverage and those with a forex component in an asset base.