The SEC has committed to prepare a rulemaking recommendation on exempting bail-in securities from registration, per the EU-US regulatory forum statement

One sentence in this document commits anybody to anything.

It reads that the EU welcomed the Securities and Exchange Commission's commitment to prepare a rulemaking recommendation regarding a potential exemption from the Securities Act's registration requirements for securities offered and sold in connection with a regulatory bail-in. That is the mechanism by which a failing European bank has its debt written down or converted into shares. Where those shares reach holders in the United States, US securities law applies to the offer, and a resolution authority working against a weekend deadline has to deal with it. The statement gives no timetable for the recommendation, and a recommendation is not a proposal and a proposal is not a rule.

The rest is a record of who said what. The Forum met in Brussels on 9 and 10 June, co-chaired by the European Commission and the US Treasury. On the EU side the Commission sat with the European Central Bank, the European Banking Authority, the European Securities and Markets Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the Single Resolution Board. On the US side Treasury sat with the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Nine topics are listed. Digital finance opened the meeting, with the US giving an update on implementing the GENIUS Act and the EU on its current review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation and on the continuing development of the digital euro. Participants discussed tokenisation of securities and the use of tokenised collateral, operational resilience, and the use of artificial intelligence in financial services. On financial stability the statement records the view that the global financial system has been showing resilience against high asset valuations and an uncertain outlook, and notes a discussion of recent developments in private credit. Bank resolution came up alongside a recent FDIC analysis of the deposit runs of March 2023. The EU described work to shorten its settlement cycle and the equivalence framework under the Central Securities Depositories Regulation, and the SEC described its rules on clearing US Treasuries. US participants asked how EU insurance regulation treats GNMA securities.

Then there is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which has been the longest-running European grievance in this dialogue. The statement disposes of it in one line: US participants provided an update. No content, no commitment, no date.

The publication lag is itself part of the record. The meeting closed on 10 June and the readout appeared on 24 July, which is 44 days. Nothing in the document explains the gap, and nothing in it is time-sensitive enough to have been harmed by it. The two sides say they will keep engaging ahead of the next Forum, expected late in 2026.