(23)In order to ensure that all persons interacting with companies are protected, Member States should be able to prevent fraudulent or other abusive behaviour by refusing the appointment of a person as a director of a company, taking into account not only the former conduct of that person in their own territory, but, where so provided under national law, also information provided by other Member States. Member States should, therefore, be allowed to request information from other Member States. The reply could either consist of information on a disqualification in force or other information which is relevant for disqualification in the Member State that received the request. Such requests for information should be possible by means of the system of interconnection of registers. In that regard, Member States should be free to choose how to best collect this information, such as by gathering the relevant information from any registers or other places where it is stored in accordance with their national law or by creating dedicated registers or dedicated sections in business registers. Where further information, such as on the period and grounds of disqualification, is needed, Member States should be allowed to provide it through all available systems of exchange of information, in accordance with national law. However, this Directive should not create an obligation to request such information in every case. Moreover, being allowed to take into account information on disqualification in another Member State should not oblige Member States to recognise disqualifications in force in other Member States.