Summit: Minor progress on banking supervision

Despite pleas to go further, EU leaders gathering in Brussels for the European Council only managed to agree upon limited steps to improve the cross-border supervision of banks, widely seen as one of the missing links behind the current financial crisis.

The conclusions of the summit remain vague, simply calling for “the coordination of supervision at European level” to be improved, which was a let-down for those expecting more. 

After hints from the European Commission, a proposal to establish a unique EU supervisor hovered around the two-day Council (EURACTIV 15/10/08). Indeed, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating EU presidency, underlined some member states’ “very ambitious” ideas on European supervision during the first day of the summit (15 October). 

However, at the end of the day, leaders left out any reference to a common supervisor from their agreed conclusions, failing even to mention the less ambitious concept of ‘group supervision’. The latter would have implied the creation of ad hoc teams of national supervisors to control cross-border groups, such as Fortis or Santander. 

Under such a system, the supervisory authority of the multinational company’s country of origin (Belgium for Fortis, Spain for Santander) would have had a clear mandate over other national supervisors, thereby guaranteeing a clear decision-making process. This model is notably already being applied in the ongoing reform of the European insurance sector (Solvency II).

But instead, leaders opted for what Commission President José Manuel Barroso labeled the “minimalistic” ‘college of supervisors’ approach. While collegial supervision is also based on ad hoc teams, it differs from group supervision because it foresees only unclear power-sharing between national supervisors. Many fear that such a model would in fact make it impossible to make decisions. However, for many states worried about losing delicate control over their main banks’ balance sheets, it remained by far the preferred solution.

The only apparent new advance contained in the Council conclusions was a call for national supervisors “to meet at least once a month to exchange information”. However, this step to improve coordination is largely cosmetic as EU supervisors already meet regularly. “They have four official meetings per year but on special occasions they meet much more often. In the last month alone, they held five teleconferences,” a spokeswoman for the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) told EURACTIV.

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