SENEGAL Trends and Developments Contributed by: Franck Olivier Allessie, SCP Houda & Associés
• The WAMU Council of Ministers adopts a directive in one of the areas provided for in Article 34 of the WAMU Treaty. • The WAMU Council of Ministers adopts the draft uniform law incorporating the text of the directive adopted by WAMU. The draft uniform law often sets a deadline for member states to take the necessary steps to incorpo - rate it into their legal systems. • The member states must incorporate the draft uniform law thus adopted into their norma - tive orders in accordance with their internal procedures. This directive was transposed into a draft uni - form law adopted by a decision of the WAMU Council of Ministers No 26/CM/WAMU of 2 July 2016. This decision of the Council of Ministers gave the states a period of six months, from the date of its signature, to take the necessary steps to incorporate the draft uniform law into their legal systems. The methods of transposing the draft uniform law into the respective national laws of the member states, which form part of the process of transposing a directive, have their own spe - cific features. As uniform laws are not listed in the nomenclature of national laws, the member states should not add the adjective “uniform” to the title of the national transposition law. In fact, this text often constitutes an ordinary law, drawn up with a view to incorporating a draft uniform law into the national legal order. It would be suf - ficient to indicate the legislative basis of the text followed by its number and title. In the process of incorporating the draft uniform law into national legislation, the member states do not have a great deal of discretion. Indeed, as the draft has been adopted by the WAMU Council of Ministers, member states are obliged
to incorporate its provisions into their legal sys - tems, without making any changes or inserting any provisions that might conflict with the Com - munity text. Moreover, once the draft uniform law has been incorporated into national legislation and comes into force, it is no longer possible for the national legislator to make amendments that would call into question the substance of the text adopted by the WAMU Council of Ministers. However, the adoption of the draft uniform law does not always rule out any room for manoeuvre for states. Article 17 of the WAMU Treaty states that the Council of Ministers shall consent to any der - ogations deemed necessary to adapt the draft texts it has adopted “to the specific conditions of WAMU member states”. It should be noted that the new regulations go further by broadening their scope of application, introducing legal possibilities for a credit institu - tion governed by foreign law, for the establish - ment of an intermediary financial holding com - pany and legal clarifications regarding Islamic banking and factoring. This article looks at the main legislative innova - tions proposed and their impact on the future of the banking sector in the WAEMU and Senegal in particular. Some New Features of the Uniform Law on Banking Regulation in the WAMU A broader legal scope The new regulations have a much broader legal scope than the 2008 Banking Law. This exten - sion is clearly visible in Article 2, which states that: “This law applies to banks, financial institu - tions, payment institutions and electronic money institutions carrying out their activities in the ter - ritory of [one of the WAMU states), regardless
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