28.12.2001 Official Journal of the European Communities L 344[1 (Acts whose publication is obligatory) REGULATION (EC) No 2558/2001 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 3 December 2001 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 as regards the reclassification of settlements under swaps arrangements and under forward rate agreements (Text with EEA relevance) THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 285(1) thereof, Having regard to the proposal from the Commission ('), Having regard to the opinion of the European Central Bank (?), Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty (%), Whereas: Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 of 25 June 1996 on the European System of national and regional accounts in the Community (*) contains the reference framework of common standards, definitions, classifica- tions and accounting rules for drawing up the accounts of the Member States for the statistical requirements of the European Community, in order to obtain compar- able results between Member States. In ESA 95, as in SNA 93, swaps are defined (5.67) as ‘contractual arrangements between two parties who agree to exchange, over time and according to predeter- mined rules, streams of payments on the same amounts of indebtedness’ and it is specified that ‘the two most prevalent varieties are interest rate swaps and currency swaps’. () O] C 116 E, 26.4.2000, p. 63. () O] C 103, 3.42001, p. 8. (*) Opinion of the European Parliament of 15 March 2001 (not yet published in the Official Journal) and Decision of the Council of 8 November 2001. () O] L 310, 30.11.1996, p. 1. Regulation as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) No 995/2001 (O] L 139, 23.5.2001, p. 3). () In original versions of ESA 95 and SNA 93, interest flows exchanged between two counterparts under any kinds of swaps and under forward rate agreements have been considered as non-financial transactions, recorded in property income, under the item interest. Problems have been raised by this statement and the Commission thus considers that it is necessary to exclude these interest flows from property income, in a manner similar to revised SNA 93. It is therefore appropriate to record these flows in finan- cial transactions under the item financial derivatives, included in ESA 95 in F3 entitled ‘Securities other than shares’. A specific treatment of these flows should be defined for the data transmitted under the excessive deficit proce- dure. The Committee on the statistical programmes of the European Communities, established by Decision 89/ 382/EEC, Euratom (°), and the Committee on Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments Statistics, established by Decision 91/115/EEC (°), have each been consulted in accordance with Article 3 of the said Decisions, HAVE ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: Article 1 Annex A of Council Regulation (EC) No 222396 shall be amended in accordance with the Annex to this Regulation. () O] L 181, 28.6.1989, p. 47. (% O] L 59, 6.3.1991, 174[EC (O] L 51, 1.3.1996, p. 48). p. 19. Decision as amended by Decision 96/