Financial supervision package

In response to the financial crisis, and actually before it took over European sovereign debt markets, the European Commission published a package of legislative proposals aimed at establishing a new European financial supervisory architecture to oversee the financial markets more effectively.

More specifically, the Commission intended to replace the existing network of national supervisors with the following European agencies: a European Banking Authority (EBA), a European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), a European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and a European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) to monitor the entire financial system.

The Greens believe that common supervision is necessary and should focus sharply on consumer protection.

We also believe that the competence of the EU supervisory authorities (ESAs) should extend to the entire financial system, including hedge funds and rating agencies.

Finally, we advocate transparent oversight with real powers, like the ability to impose leverage ratios and ban certain financial products.

The Greens succeeded in making consumer protection one of the objectives of the new ESAs, which will be empowered to impose binding decisions on national supervisors if they do not react appropriately in a crisis.

We also succeeded in introducing amendments to ensure that non-profit-making NGOs can participate in advisory stakeholder groups with adequate financial compensation and that external experts will have voting rights in the ESRB.

The Greens have tried, but so far failed, to introduce amendments on country-by-country reporting on the profits and tax payments of multinational companies.

We regret the national egoism of Member States, who all tried to grab a piece of the action, with the result that the agencies are now spread over three cities in three countries. This makes supervision less efficient because more coordination is required, and also less effective because the agencies are separate entities.

We deem it unconstructive that it was the Council, rather than the more independent Commission, which during the negotiations pared back the right to declare a state of emergency.

Furthermore we argued in favour of a common bank resolution fund to help wind down financial institutions that go bankrupt or become non-viable.