Things got fairly heated between the negotiators of the European Parliament over the draft regulation aiming to revitalise the markets for securitised products by creating a "simple, standardised and transparent" label to denote good-quality products.
On Tuesday 11 October, during a discussion at the parliamentary committee on the amendments tabled to the report by Paul Tang (S&D, Netherlands), the political groups seemed to be showing a few signs of impatience at the reporter's position.
"I sometimes get the feeling that we want to build a car for five people but we want to provide airbags for eight, seat belts for seven and then we complain that the car doesn't go fast enough", said Austria's Othmar Karas, who is negotiating on the text on behalf of the EPP Group. The ECR Group's negotiator, Morten Messerschmidt of Denmark, betrayed a certain amount of exasperation. "I share your ambition for a broad alliance" on this dossier, but this "requires some willingness to compromise", he said, going on to speculate that the rapporteur was trying to create a "paradise on earth" and needed a reality check.
The main issue is that of banks retaining the risk so that securitised products are not created simply in order to be distributed to investors. The European Commission provided for a risk retention requirement of 5%. Tang increased this to 20%, as called for by the NGO Finance Watch. The GUE/NGL wants to go even further, with a requirement of 25%. It seems that "cutting in the middle won't do" to please everybody, the rapporteur said. Messerschmidt said that given the ambition to make rapid progress, he found it strange to keep coming forward with "new and controversial ideas that don't reflect the recommendations of the ECB and the European Banking Authority (EBA)".
We are "also waiting for the completion of banking union, but that also needs results" stressed Tang, who has drawn a connection between the two dossiers in the past. He said that the European Parliament should not go along with the opinion of the Council of the EU, which reached its position on securitisation inside three months, but take its own stance on the dossier. "This is the only public debate on the securitisation dossier", as the Council's discussions took place behind closed doors, he added. "It is important that this product is better than it was before because we learned lessons from the past", he said, concluding by stressing the need to ensure that the concerns of both sides of the political spectrum are addressed. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)