EU ministers to back single mortgage market steps

BRUSSELS, May 7 (Reuters) - European Union finance ministers are set to back moves to increase choice of home loans for the bloc's 490 million consumers in the 5.8 trillion euro sector, a draft document showed on Wednesday.

Ministers meeting next Wednesday are set to endorse a decision by EU Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy's to study measures that could form the basis of a single market in mortgages.

The emphasis should be on making it easier for lenders to offer their services to anyone in the EU rather than on consumers going abroad to find a better deal as they face cultural and language barriers, the draft conclusions said.

"Further integration is therefore likely to be supply driven rather than demand driven in the foreseeable future", the draft conclusions said.

McCreevy's policy paper, published last December, noted that consumers were expected to continue taking out mortgages locally but that competition among lenders across the EU would help drive down the cost of home loans.

An early version of McCreevy's paper said regulation was needed but this sparked resistance from Britain and Germany. A decision on regulation was deferred pending further market studies.

Ministers are set to back the Commission's planned studies into the benefits and costs of different policy options such as access to credit registers to assess a customer's creditworthiness on a cross-border basis.

The EU hopes more public information will spur competition.

Ministers will welcome the Commission's intention to "design and to regularly update 'scoreboards' presenting objective information on the cost and duration of land registration and foreclosure procedures in all member states".