Recital 1

(1)Directive 97/5/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 January 1997 on cross-border credit transfers(5) sought to improve cross-border credit transfer services and notably their efficiency. The aim was to enable in particular consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises to make credit transfers rapidly, reliably and cheaply from one part of the Community to another. Such credit transfers and cross-border payments in general are still extremely expensive compared to payments at national level. It emerges from the findings of a study undertaken by the Commission and released on 20 September 2001 that consumers are given insufficient or no information on the cost of transfers, and that the average cost of cross-border credit transfers has hardly changed since 1993 when a comparable study was carried out.