On Wednesday, 4 November 2026, the European Commission presented its work programme for 2027. Annex III, the list of withdrawals, includes as number 5 the proposal of 28 June 2023 for a regulation on access to financial data, the Financial Data Access Regulation (FiDA). The Commission gives its reasons in two short sentences: the file has been with the co-legislators for more than three years, no trilogue has taken place since June 2025, and the Council is unlikely to support it within a reasonable timeframe. The trade press has since reported the end of an open finance project. The German associations of insurers, cooperative banks and fund managers have welcomed the move.
Formally, FiDA is still alive. A footnote to the annex says that the Commission "intends" to withdraw the listed proposals within six months. Intentions of this kind can lapse: in February 2025 the withdrawal pencilled into the draft work programme for that year never reached the final version. What the annex leaves out carries more weight than the date. For the European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS), three entries further up, the Commission names a successor. For FiDA it names none. Six days earlier the Council adopted its position on the Payment Services Regulation (PSR), which the Commission had proposed on the same day as FiDA. Open banking through the payment account is thus carried forward in the PSR, once Parliament approves the Council's position. Access to investment, credit and insurance data goes back to the market, and for banks this means that the obligation to share disappears while the competition for their customers' data continues.
What follows is a reading of the work programme and the procedural documents, not a forecast. Whether and when the withdrawal takes effect is for the Commission to decide after hearing the co-legislators, and a later proposal covering parts of open finance cannot be ruled out. An article on this site, published in February, expected a political agreement in the course of 2026. That expectation has not been met. Its account of the data categories now describes what, for the time being, will not arrive.
What: announced withdrawal of the FiDA proposal COM(2023) 360 in the Commission's 2027 work programme, COM(2026) 710, Annex III No 5, of 4 November 2026
Timing: withdrawal "within six months" according to the footnote to the annex, which works out at early May 2027
Reasons: pending for more than three years, no trilogue since June 2025, no majority in the Council within a reasonable timeframe
Successor: none named, unlike the deposit insurance scheme EDIS on the same list
What remains: the Payment Services Regulation and the third Payment Services Directive (PSD3), with interfaces and a permissions dashboard for payment accounts, Council position of 29 October 2026, Parliament still to vote
The Commission blames the deadlock in the Council
The annex entry consists of two sentences: "The file has been pending with co-legislators more than three years. No trilogues have taken place since June 2025 and the file is unlikely to secure support in the Council within a reasonable timeframe." It passes no judgement on substance, and that sets it apart from the first attempt. In February 2025 the Börsen-Zeitung reported that the draft 2025 work programme found the regulation out of line with the Commission's current objectives, and that the burden it placed on the financial sector undermined the goal of simplification. Back then the criticism concerned the substance. This time the Commission cites the procedure and says where the file stalled.
Where it stalled is set out in a Commission non-paper that the Council presidency circulated to member states on 6 April 2026 as WK 5041/2026. It records "no developments on FiDA in the European Parliament following the second trilogue meeting in June 2025" and sorts the open questions in the Council. One central dispute concerned the large platforms designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In an earlier non-paper of May 2025, the Commission had proposed denying them a licence as financial information service providers and prohibiting the combination of FiDA data with other datasets. According to the paper, many member states supported this, while "many others favour full exclusion of gatekeepers from FiDA", and the Council had not reached sufficient convergence. A second dispute concerned a demand-driven approach, under which some member states wanted only data with proven demand to be standardised. The Commission rejected it, arguing that letting market operators choose when and how the law applies would be incompatible with the regulation's objectives.
The procedural reasoning can be read as diplomatic cover, and there is evidence for that reading. Politico writes that traditional financial firms, "insurers above all", rejected the regulation at every opportunity, while Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque defended the file and saved it at least once from simplification cuts. That may be so, but it explains less than it appears to. What counts in the Council in the end is whether a qualified majority forms behind a particular text, and on the gatekeeper question that text was not finished as of the April 2026 non-paper. A regulation whose scope the member states cannot agree on needs no verdict on its substance to be withdrawn.
The annex names no successor for FiDA
The same list shows, three entries higher, what a withdrawal with a follow-up looks like. The 2015 EDIS proposal has been pending for more than ten years "and is to be replaced by the proposals on banking competitiveness in Q1 2027". There the Commission says what will take the place of the old text and when. No such sentence appears for FiDA. On this list that is the rule rather than the exception: the Green Claims Directive, too, cites only the lack of a Council majority and names no successor. For FiDA the gap weighs more, because open finance is no side issue and the Commission does not place it anywhere else. Under point 9 of the 2016 Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making, the Commission gives its reasons when it intends to withdraw a proposal and, "if applicable, an indication of the intended subsequent steps along with a precise timetable". For FiDA it evidently saw no subsequent steps as applicable.
Put in trading terms, FiDA was an option on a law, and the Commission is letting it expire rather than rolling the position into a successor. The Savings and Investments Union is still on the agenda, admittedly, and open finance could be placed within its logic of making customer data usable across providers. As proposals to complete it, however, the main document names the reform of the venture capital framework and the package on bank competitiveness and simplification, and it nowhere mentions open finance or financial data. Nor does the Data Act, which has applied since 12 September 2025, fill the gap. Under Article 1(2) and Article 2(5), its access rights cover data from connected products and related services, and its operative text mentions neither payment accounts nor credit institutions. On this reading it supplies only general rules on compensation and fair terms once another law imposes a duty to share. Outside the payment account, that duty is exactly what disappears with FiDA.
FiDA survived the withdrawal list once before, in February 2025
FiDA itself has shown that a place on this list need not be final. On 11 February 2025 Cash., citing the Börsen-Zeitung, reported that the draft 2025 work programme listed the regulation among the withdrawals. A day later it appeared among the pending proposals in the final version, and the published 2025 work programme lists it as number 36 in Annex III, "Pending proposals". At the time, Norman Wirth of AfW Bundesverband Finanzdienstleistung, the German association of financial service intermediaries, spoke of a "(in my view very vague) possibility" of further negotiation. It was taken up for a second trilogue in June 2025, but not again afterwards.
The procedure for the current announcement gives the co-legislators leverage but no veto. Under the 2016 agreement, the Commission consults Parliament and Council and responds to their positions. Parliament's competent committee can invite the Commissioner under its Rules of Procedure and request a statement before the plenary. According to an analysis by the European Parliamentary Research Service, the final decision nonetheless remains "solidly in the hands of the Commission", and the Court of Justice requires a withdrawal to rest on legitimate grounds that can be reviewed. Such a withdrawal is usually completed by a notice in the Official Journal.
The precedent is a good reason not to treat the six months as a formality. The situation differs in two respects, however. In 2025 the withdrawal appeared in a leaked draft and was dropped before adoption, whereas in 2026 it is in the adopted document. And this time the reasoning points to the Council, which even a determined Parliament cannot bring round. As of 5 November 2026, no public statement against the withdrawal from the rapporteur, the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee or the Council presidency was known. Anyone betting on a repeat of 2025 is thus betting on a Council that settles within six months the gatekeeper question on which, according to the April 2026 non-paper, it had not yet reached sufficient convergence.
The Payment Services Regulation carries open banking forward, but only for the payment account
On 28 June 2023 the Commission put forward two packages: the payment services proposals PSD3 and PSR, and the FiDA proposal. They have drifted apart since. The Council fixed its position on the payments package on 18 June 2025, the same month as the last FiDA trilogue. On 27 November 2025 Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on PSD3 and PSR, Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee endorsed the text on 5 May 2026, and on 29 October 2026 the Council adopted its first-reading position on both the directive and the regulation. Parliament now votes at second reading, and the Legislative Observatory gives 14 December 2026 as the provisional date.
What the PSR provides on data access is set out in the Council position. Under Article 36, every bank that offers a payment account accessible online must maintain at least one dedicated interface for account information and payment initiation services, and Article 38 requires that interface to match the availability and performance of the bank's own customer interface. Article 45 lists, in twelve points, obstacles that an interface must not create, from additional registrations to duplicate authentication. Article 44 obliges the account-holding bank to offer a dashboard on which customers can see their consents, withdraw them at any time free of charge and restore them within 48 hours. According to its final article, the regulation applies 21 months after entry into force, and the rules on matching payee name and IBAN after 27 months. A calendar date will only exist once it is published in the Official Journal.
That dashboard does not come from FiDA. It was already in the Commission's 2023 PSR proposal, then as Article 43, and appears in the Council position as Article 44. FiDA provided for a dashboard of its own in Article 8, covering the other financial data. In the Council, the presidency proposed in January 2025 to align the PSR dashboard with FiDA as far as possible, and a few member states wanted a single joint dashboard. FiDA no longer appears in the agreed texts of PSR and PSD3. Anyone who planned a joint consent management system for both regulations is left with the half that covers the payment account.
The United Kingdom treats open finance as a roadmap backed by statutory powers
A comparison with the United Kingdom shows that the EU is not alone in lacking an obligation. Unlike the FCA, however, the Commission names no next step in its work programme. In London, too, open finance is not a legal requirement in 2026. In April 2026 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its roadmap "Open finance: Our vision for a smart data future", in which it announces: "In Q4 2026, we will publish a discussion paper focused on the first open finance scheme." According to the roadmap, a design phase follows in 2027 and scaling from 2028 to 2030, and the FCA's press release says it will work with the Treasury on options for a regulatory framework by the end of 2027. As first use cases it names lending to small and medium-sized businesses and mortgages.
Westminster has already laid the legal groundwork. The first part of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 empowers the government to introduce smart data schemes through sector-specific regulations, and its section 14 deals specifically with the FCA's role in interfaces for financial services. These powers have been in force since 20 August 2025. No smart data regulation for financial services had been found by the research cut-off. The British model thus reverses the EU's sequence. Brussels first wrote a regulation with obligations for numerous data categories beyond the payment account and failed to reach agreement. London creates a power and intends to fill it one use case at a time. After 4 November 2026 the EU has neither. For a bank with business on both sides of the Channel, the FCA discussion paper due in the fourth quarter of 2026 is therefore worth reading.
Competition for customer data continues without a statutory interface
Reactions are divided. Jörg Asmussen, chief executive of the German Insurance Association (GDV), said on 4 November: "Gut, dass die Kommission bei FiDA die Reißleine zieht" (it is good that the Commission is pulling the ripcord on FiDA). Forcing companies to build costly data superhighways that no customer has asked for does not get Europe anywhere, he added, and European consumers' financial data should not be served up to large platforms outside Europe "auf einem Silbertablett", on a plate. Tanja Müller-Ziegler, board member of the National Association of German Cooperative Banks (BVR), called the withdrawal "konsequent und richtig", consistent and correct, because FiDA would have opened the door to European financial data for non-European tech groups. Thomas Richter of BVI, the German investment funds association, spoke of a "positives Signal", a positive signal.
The Association of German Banks, whose members include fintechs, was more reserved, according to the Börsen-Zeitung. Kolja Gabriel of its management board pointed out that the decision reflected the lack of any prospect of agreement in the Council, and that there had been questions about what the regulation would actually add. The European FinTech Association "deeply regrets" the decision, the same newspaper reports, and by its own estimate open finance would raise EU gross domestic product in 2030 by 1% to 1.5%. Lukas Spohr of the digital association Bitkom still considers the underlying idea right and said the withdrawal must not end the debate. Andres Lehtmets, formerly at the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), wrote on LinkedIn on 4 November: "I still believe open finance is right for consumers, for businesses and for Europe's competitiveness. In the era of agentic finance, even more so." No statements from the European umbrella associations of banks, insurers or consumers were known as of the research cut-off.
The relief among data holders has a real basis. According to the GDV, FiDA would have tied up considerable resources in interfaces, data systems and dashboards, and firms would have had to pass data they currently analyse themselves to licensed third parties at their customers' request. For banks, however, the situation is reassuring only at first glance. Without a statutory interface, each firm decides for itself what access it opens and on what terms, and some open it voluntarily. The BVR points to giroAPI, the private-sector interface of the German banking industry, and Scalable Capital has opened its securities account to AI assistants via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) without any law requiring it. For payment accounts, by contrast, third-party access remains a right. Under Article 42(2) PSR, account information services may retrieve data "whether or not the payment service user is actively requesting such information". That is how aggregators reach account data today, and it is the route an AI assistant with account access would take as well. A firm that is not obliged to share its data can negotiate access. It can also lose the customer relationship to a competitor that offers such access as a product.
Recommendations for data strategy, payments and regulatory affairs
For payment accounts, the interface, parity with the customer interface, the prohibited obstacles and the permissions dashboard remain mandatory under Articles 36, 38, 44 and 45 PSR, applicable 21 months after entry into force. Projects that planned FiDA and PSR together can be split along this line instead of being stopped as a whole. Under Article 40 only the competent authority can grant an exemption from the dedicated interface, so it is no basis for planning a fallback.
After the withdrawal there is no obligation to share investment, credit and insurance data, but there is visible interest from intermediaries and fintechs, as the European FinTech Association's statement and earlier comments by AfW show. Whether a firm opens that access via giroAPI, bilateral contracts or its own interfaces, at what price and with what limits, is a product decision that should be taken before the first competitor arrives. For payment accounts this discretion does not exist: the PSR requires access through the dedicated interface and prohibits the obstacles listed in Article 45.
Until then FiDA remains a pending proposal. A hearing of the Commissioner in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, a statement before the plenary or a compromise offer from the Council would signal a repeat of 2025. Without such signals, publication in the Official Journal is the end point. In the meantime a dormant preparation programme costs little, whereas a team disbanded too early costs time if the 2025 sequence does repeat itself.
The 21-month period starts to run once the regulation enters into force, 20 days after publication in the Official Journal, which in turn follows Parliament's vote, provisionally scheduled for 14 December 2026. Open banking budgets tied to FiDA today should be tied to the start of that period instead. According to the final article, some provisions, including Article 92 and the transitional rules in Article 118, apply from entry into force, while matching payee name and IBAN follows only after 27 months.
Glossary
FiDA: Financial Data Access Regulation, the Commission's June 2023 proposal for a customer right to share financial data beyond the payment account, such as investment, credit and insurance data, with licensed third parties through standardised interfaces.
Open banking and open finance: Open banking is third-party access to payment account data and payment initiation with the customer's consent, regulated since the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and in future under the PSR. Open finance extends this principle to other financial data, and in the EU FiDA was meant to regulate it.
Account information service: a service that retrieves and aggregates account data with the customer's consent but does not initiate payments.
Permissions dashboard: an interface provided by the account-holding bank on which customers can see, withdraw and restore the data access they have granted. In the PSR, Article 44, for payment accounts only.
Gatekeeper: a large platform company designated by the Commission under the Digital Markets Act. Its access to FiDA data was one of the open disputes in the Council.
Withdrawal list: the annex to the annual work programme listing pending proposals that the Commission intends to withdraw within six months. The withdrawal takes effect only afterwards.
EDIS: European Deposit Insurance Scheme, a 2015 proposal for European deposit insurance, also on the withdrawal list and, according to the Commission, to be replaced by the banking package in the first quarter of 2027.
Christian Schablitzki – the agentic banker
Strategy & Management Consultant · Agentic AI expert for financial institutions
More than 20 years in investment banking and derivatives trading, followed by over 10 years advising financial institutions. Certified as Claude Partner – Claude Code (Anthropic), as well as in Google AI, Generative AI Leader (Google Cloud) and IBM RAG and Agentic AI.
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