Open Letter to Schäuble

29.10.2012: Twelve Organisations, among them WEED, have sent an open letter to the german finance minister on curbing food speculation and prohibiting shadow trading of commodity derivatives.

In the course of the consultations about the european MiFID directive towards a regulation of the financial markets, the alliance demands "binding postion limits against excessive speculation that are valid for single traders and groups of traders every trading months and even for those, that are traded off-market. In the alliance's view, the current proposal of the European Council contains dangerous weaknesses. It is very critical, that the proposed limits don't include off-market trading, like in the USA. In their open letter, the organisations call on Schäuble, the german finance minister, to advocate on a regulation, also on the so called transactions over-the-counter(OTC). This are contracts, that evade almost every control mechanism and are a kind of shadow trading.

The alliance finds very strong evidence for the impact of excessive speculation with commodity futures on the frood price. So far, more then 150.000 citizens have signed and supported the petitions on curbing food speculation and on position limits without loopholes by mail.