Three watchdogs – one for insurers, one for banks and one for markets – as well as a European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) will today get the all clear to begin supervising the EU's financial sector as of January next year.
MEPs are expected today to vote on the package by an overwhelming majority, according to parliamentary sources.
The weighty legislative package for stronger financial supervision in the EU was the subject of an intense power-grabbing exercise between the European Parliament and the EU's member states, especially Britain, which is home to the bloc's biggest financial sector.
Yesterday French MEP Sylvie Goulard (ALDE) sent a warning note to the bloc's capitals that if the package failed, they only had themselves to blame.
Her remark is aimed at a concession made to get the former British Labour government's backing for the package.
The budgetary concession – a fiscal safeguard in EU speak – allows a national government to veto the EU watchdog's intervention if, for example, they decide the ruling would compromise their national budget.
Onlookers wonder how the watchdogs will manage to overrule the national regulators and governments when the bank in question might be the recipient of a taxpayer-funded bailout.
"No member state can invoke the budgetary safeguard when an institution has toxic assets that are generating revenues," said Jose Manuel Margallo y Garcia, a Spanish Christian Democrat MEP and rapporteur for the package.
"To my mind it would be better not to have the safeguard at all," said British Labour MEP Peter Skinner. "But this was a subject of complete paralysis," he added.
In December 2009, UK Finance Minister Alistair Darling insisted on Britain receiving a guarantee from the EU that it would not overstep its national fiscal sovereignty (EurActiv 03/12/09).
