EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy says the dream of a single Europe-wide rule book for equity market trading runs the risk of becoming a "practical nightmare", as euro zone regulators adopt their own distinct MiFID enforcement and compliance guidelines.

Speaking at a high level City event organised by the UK Treasury, McCreevy admitted that the MiFID project for streamlined and transparent cross-border trading was in danger of falling foul of different national interpretations of the rule book.  

“This will certainly happen if we end up supplementing the single rule book with the handiwork of a dozen or more gold-platers, with manuals of interpretative guidelines, with a multiplicity of different types and numbers of reporting fields – demanded by 27 different regulators," he told the meeting. "I hope my fears prove ill-grounded. We all need to find pragmatic and workable solutions to ensure we maximise the benefits from MiFID.”

McCreevy pointed to failures at the Level One and Two consultation and implementation stages of the Directive, which is slated for introduction in November 2007. He says that difficult issues were not faced up to at Level One and practical considerations glossed over at Level Two.

MiFID represents the biggest overhaul in securities trading since London’s Big bang reforms in the 1980s. If the rulebook proves to be a dog’s breakfast, then blame must be shared between all participants.

In pushing through the MiFID framework, McCreevy and the Committee of European Securities Regulators have hurried and harried market practitioners at every step. Genuine concerns expressed by industry lobbyists about the lack of clarity in the Level One edicts emerging from Brussels were airily dismissed as special pleading.

At the same time, the failure of market participants to wake up to the practical and operational aspects of the MiFID proposals and help shape policy at the earliest round of consultations demonstrates a real lack of leadership at the highest levels.