Arrêté royal modifiant l’article 2 de la loi du 28 avril 1999 visant à transposer la directive 98/26/CE du 19 mai 1998 concernant le caractère définitif du règlement dans les systèmes de paiement et de règlement des opérations sur titres

The Royal Decree of 6 March 2023 was published on Etaamb, amending the Law of 28 April 1999, which aims to transpose the Directive 98/26/CE of 19 May 1998 concerning the finality of settlement in payment and securities settlement systems, and to bring the Belgian law in line with the new European Central Bank regulations regarding payment and securities settlement systems.
More specifically, the amendment concerns Article 2, §1 of the aforementioned law, which contains the list of payment and securities settlement systems governed by Belgian law. The present royal decree explains that Article 2, §5 of the law grants the King the power to modify the list of systems mentioned in paragraph 1. The purpose of the amendment is to modify Article 2, §1, a) and update Article 2, §1, b) of the law. Currently, the list includes „TARGET2-BE,“ which is Belgium’s component of the transeuropean automated real-time gross settlement system, TARGET2, operated by the National Bank of Belgium.
Starting from 20 March 2023, TARGET2 will be replaced by a new system called TARGET, which will make payments in central bank money. The present royal decree notes that the legal structure of TARGET will be similar to that of TARGET2, and the systems that make up TARGET will be the legal successors to their corresponding systems in TARGET2.
Furthermore, the present royal decree explains that the name of Belgium’s system, currently named TARGET2-BE, will be changed to TARGET-BE, in accordance with the naming convention for systems in TARGET.
The present royal decree modifies Article 2, §1, b) to update the list of designated securities settlement systems by removing BNY Mellon CSD. BNY Mellon’s approval as a central securities depository was also withdrawn. Furthermore, the National Bank of Belgium operates a securities settlement system referred to as NBB SSS, which replaces Clearing NBB and is used by participants in the system and the sector. Hence, Article 2 of the law of 28 April 1999 is updated by replacing Clearing NBB with NBB-SSS.