Statement by Denmark
Denmark welcomes the compromise found by the Council and the European
Parliament in the trilogue on the regulation on interchange fees for card-based
payment transactions, and we thank the Greek, Italian and Latvian Presidencies for
their efforts in achieving this. The compromise takes into account the need for
flexibility for domestic payment cards markets where existing debit payment cards
schemes work efficiently, providing consumers and merchants with widely used and
cost-effective payment alternatives. The regulation of interchange fees may also help
the payments framework to better serve the needs of an effective European
payments market, fully contributing to a payments environment which nurtures
competition and innovation.
However, we continue to believe that the interchange fee regulation as a whole
should not apply to the cost-efficient domestic debit card schemes with an
interchange fee generally lower than the caps in the compromise text. Some of the
provisions of the regulation could have unintended consequences and possibly lower
the usage of these domestic debit cards, thus leading to higher costs to the detriment
of consumers and merchants.
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