Whereas it is necessary to complete the internal market in direct insurance other than life assurance from the point of view both of the right of establishment and of the freedom to provide services, to make it easier for insurance undertakings with head offices in the Community to cover risks situated within the Community;

Whereas the Second Council Directive of 22 June 1988 on the coordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to direct insurance other than life assurance and laying down provisions to facilitate the effective exercise of freedom to provide services and amending Directive 72/239/EEC (88/357/EEC)4 has already contributed substantially to the achievement of the internal market in direct insurance other than life assurance by granting policyholders who, by virtue of their status, their size or the nature of the risks to be insured, do not require special protection in the Member State in which a risk is situated complete freedom to avail themselves of the widest possible insurance market;

Whereas Directive 88/357/EEC therefore represents an important stage in the merging of national markets into an integrated market and that stage must be supplemented by other Community instruments with a view to enabling all policyholders, irrespective of their status, their size or the nature of the risks to be insured, to have recourse to any insurer with a head office in the Community who carries on business there, under the right of establishment or the freedom to provide services, while guaranteeing them adequate protection;

Whereas this Directive forms part of the body of Community legislation already enacted which includes the First Council Directive of 24 July 1973 on the coordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to the taking up and pursuit of the business of direct insurance other than life assurance (73/239/EEC)5 and the Council Directive of 19 December 1991 on the annual accounts and consolidated accounts of insurance undertakings (91/674/EEC)6;

Whereas the approach adopted consists in bringing about such harmonization as is essential, necessary and sufficient to achieve the mutual recognition of authorizations and prudential control systems, thereby making it possible to grant a single authorization valid throughout the Community and apply the principle of supervision by the home Member State;

Whereas, as a result, the taking up and the pursuit of the business of insurance are henceforth to be subject to the grant of a single official authorization issued by the competent authorities of the Member State in which an insurance undertaking has its head office; whereas such authorization enables an undertaking to carry on business throughout the Community, under the right of establishment or the freedom to provide services; whereas the Member State of the branch or of the provision of services may no longer require insurance undertakings which wish to carry on insurance business there and which have already been authorized in their home Member State to seek fresh authorization; whereas Directives 73/239/EEC and 88/357/EEC should therefore be amended along those lines;

Whereas the competent authorities of home Member States will henceforth be responsible for monitoring the financial health of insurance undertakings, including their state of solvency, the establishment of adequate technical provisions and the covering of those provisions by matching assets;

Whereas certain provisions of this Directive define minimum standards; whereas a home Member State may lay down stricter rules for insurance undertakings authorized by its own competent authorities;

Whereas the competent authorities of the Member States must have at their disposal such means of supervision as are necessary to ensure the orderly pursuit of business by insurance undertakings throughout the Community whether carried on under the right of establishment or the freedom to provide services; whereas, in particular, they must be able to introduce appropriate safeguards or impose sanctions aimed at preventing irregularities and infringements of the provisions on insurance supervision;

Whereas the internal market comprises an area without internal frontiers and involves access to all insurance business other than life assurance throughout the Community and, hence, the possibility for any duly authorized insurer to cover any of the risks referred to in the Annex to Directive 73/239/EEC; whereas, to that end, the monopoly enjoyed by certain bodies in certain Member States in respect of the coverage of certain risks must be abolished;

Whereas the provisions on transfers of portfolios must be adapted to bring them into line with the single authorization system introduced by this Directive;

Whereas Directive 91/674/EEC has already effected the necessary harmonization of the Member States' rules on the technical provisions which insurers are required to establish to cover their commitments, and that harmonization makes it possible to grant mutual recognition of those provisions;

Whereas the rules governing the spread, localization and matching of the assets used to cover technical provisions must be coordinated in order to facilitate the mutual recognition of Member States' rules; whereas that coordination must take account of the measures on the liberalization of capital movements provided for in the Council Directive of 24 June 1988 for the implementation of Article 67 of the Treaty (88/361/EEC)7 and the progress made by the Community towards economic and monetary union;

Whereas, however, the home Member State may not require insurance undertakings to invest the assets covering their technical provisions in particular categories of assets, as such a requirement would be incompatible with the measures on the liberalization of capital movements provided for in Directive 88/361/EEC;

Whereas, pending the adoption of a Directive on investment services harmonizing inter alia the definition of the concept of regulated market, for the purposes of this Directive and without prejudice to such future harmonization that concept must be defined provisionally; whereas that definition will be replaced by that harmonized at Community level which will give the home Member State of the market the responsibilities for these matters which this Directive transitionally gives to the insurance undertaking's home Member State;

Whereas the list of items of which the solvency margin required by Directive 73/239/EEC may be made up must be supplemented to take account of new financial instruments and of the facilities granted to other financial institutions for the constitution of their own funds;

Whereas within the framework of an integrated insurance market policyholders who, by virtue of their status, their size or the nature of the risks to be insured, do not require special protection in the Member State in which a risk is situated should be granted complete freedom to choose the law applicable to their insurance contracts;

Whereas the harmonization of insurance contract law is not a prior condition for the achievement of the internal market in insurance; whereas, therefore, the opportunity afforded to the Member States of imposing the application of their law to insurance contracts covering risks situated within their territories is likely to provide adequate safeguards for policyholders who require special protection;

Whereas within the framework of an internal market it is in the policyholder's interest that he should have access to the widest possible range of insurance products available in the Community so that he can choose that which is best suited to his needs; whereas it is for the Member State in which the risk is situated to ensure that there is nothing to prevent the marketing within its territory of all the insurance products offered for sale in the Community as long as they do not conflict with the legal provisions protecting the general good in force in the Member State in which the risk is situated, and insofar as the general good is not safeguarded by the rules of the home Member State, provided that such provisions must be applied without discrimination to all undertakings operating in that Member State and be objectively necessary and in proportion to the objective pursued;

Whereas the Member States must be able to ensure that the insurance products and contract documents used, under the right of establishment or the freedom to provide services, to cover risks situated within their territories comply with such specific legal provisions protecting the general good as are applicable; whereas the systems of supervision to be employed must meet the requirements of an integrated market but their employment may not constitute a prior condition for carrying on insurance business; whereas from this standpoint systems for the prior approval of policy conditions do not appear to be justified; whereas it is therefore necessary to provide for other systems better suited to the requirements of an internal market which enable every Member State to guarantee policyholders adequate protection;

Whereas if a policyholder is a natural person, he should be informed by the insurance undertaking of the law which will apply to the contract and of the arrangements for handling policyholders' complaints concerning contracts;

Whereas in some Member States private or voluntary health insurance serves as a partial or complete alternative to health cover provided for by the social security systems;

Whereas the nature and social consequences of health insurance contracts justify the competent authorities of the Member State in which a risk is situated in requiring systematic notification of the general and special policy conditions in order to verify that such contracts are a partial or complete alternative to the health cover provided by the social security system; whereas such verification must not be a prior condition for the marketing of the products; whereas the particular nature of health insurance, serving as a partial or complete alternative to the health cover provided by the social security system, distinguishes it from other classes of indemnity insurance and life assurance insofar as it is necessary to ensure that policyholders have effective access to private health cover or health cover taken out on a voluntary basis regardless of their age or risk profile;

Whereas to this end some Member States have adopted specific legal provisions; whereas, to protect the general good, it is possible to adopt or maintain such legal provisions in so far as they do not unduly restrict the right of establishment or the freedom to provide services, it being understood that such provisions must apply in an identical manner whatever the home Member State of the undertaking may be; whereas these legal provisions may differ in nature according to the conditions in each Member State; whereas these measures may provide for open enrolment, rating on a uniform basis according to the type of policy and lifetime cover; whereas that objective may also be achieved by requiring undertakings offering private health cover or health cover taken out on a voluntary basis to offer standard policies in line with the cover provided by statutory social security schemes at a premium rate at or below a prescribed maximum and to participate in loss compensation schemes; whereas, as a further possibility, it may be required that the technical basis of private health cover or health cover taken out on a voluntary basis be similar to that of life assurance;

Whereas, because of the coordination effected by Directive 73/239/EEC as amended by this Directive, the possibility, afforded to the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 7 (2) (c) of the same Directive, of prohibiting the simultaneous transaction of health insurance and other classes is no longer justified and must therefore be abolished;

Whereas Member States may require any insurance undertakings offering compulsory insurance against accidents at work at their own risk within their territories to comply with the specific provisions laid down in their national law on such insurance; whereas, however, this requirement may not apply to the provisions concerning financial supervision, which are the exclusive responsibility of the home Member State;

Whereas exercise of the right of establishment requires an undertaking to maintain a permanent presence in the Member State of the branch; whereas responsibility for the specific interests of insured persons and victims in the case of third-party liability motor insurance requires adequate structures in the Member State of the branch for the collection of all the necessary information on compensation claims relating to that risk, with sufficient powers to represent the undertaking vis-à-vis injured parties who could claim compensation, including powers to pay such compensation, and to represent the undertaking or, if necessary, to arrange for it to be represented in the courts and before the competent authorities of that Member State in connection with claims for compensation;

Whereas within the framework of the internal market no Member State may continue to prohibit the simultaneous carrying on of insurance business within its territory under the right of establishment and the freedom to provide services; whereas the option granted to Member States in this connection by Directive 88/357/EEC should therefore be abolished;

Whereas provision should be made for a system of penalties to be imposed when, in the Member State in which a risk is situated, an insurance undertaking does not comply with those provisions protecting the general good that are applicable to it;

Whereas some Member States do not subject insurance transactions to any form of indirect taxation, while the majority apply special taxes and other forms of contribution, including surcharges intended for compensation bodies; whereas the structures and rates of such taxes and contributions vary considerably between the Member States in which they are applied; whereas it is desirable to prevent existing differences' leading to distortions of competition in insurance services between Member States; whereas, pending subsequent harmonization, application of the tax systems and other forms of contribution provided for by the Member States in which risks are situated is likely to remedy that problem and it is for the Member States to make arrangements to ensure that such taxes and contributions are collected;

Whereas technical adjustments to the detailed rules laid down in this Directive may be necessary from time to time to take account of the future development of the insurance industry; whereas the Commission will make such adjustments as and when necessary, after consulting the Insurance Committee set up by Directive 91/675/EEC8, in the exercise of the implementing powers conferred on it by the Treaty;

Whereas it is necessary to adopt specific provisions intended to ensure smooth transition from the legal regime in existence when this Directive becomes applicable to the regime that it introduces, taking care not to place an additional workload on Member States' competent authorities;

Whereas under Article 8 c of the Treaty account should be taken of the extent of the effort which must be made by certain economies at different stages of development; whereas, therefore, transitional arrangements should be adopted for the gradual application of this Directive by certain Member States,