European Finance Ministers were very divided on Tuesday 22 January on the proposal of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU to separate the provisions on the new powers of the European Banking Authority (EBA) to combat money laundering from the rest of the reform of the three European financial supervisory authorities (ESA, see EUROPE 11864).
This was supposed to be only a procedural issue, but the discussions, which were somewhat confusing, gave the Presidency a lot of trouble. Although its proposal did not receive as much support as hoped, Bucharest will indeed start talks with the European Parliament to enter into negotiations only on these provisions, for which the Council adopted a partial political agreement at the end of December (see EUROPE 12164).
The Presidency also undertook to make parallel progress on the rest of the reform at technical and political level, with a discussion scheduled for the February Ecofin Council meeting.
In a first round table, seventeen countries (Latvia, Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Estonia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Luxembourg) voted in favour of the Romanian proposal, considering it the most “realistic” way to conclude at least part of the negotiations on this package before the European elections in May.
The Luxembourg Minister, Pierre Gramegna, gave particularly strong support to this. “On AML, there is a real emergency to act which is not necessary the case for the others [elements of the package]”, he said.
In contrast, eight countries (France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Slovakia) asked the Presidency to make a “last effort” to reach an agreement on the global reform of the ESAs, considering that a compromise was within reach, and thus called for the separation of the "anti-money laundering" part to be considered only as a “last resort”.
This position is shared by the European Commission. "Strengthening convergence in AML supervision will not be fully realized if ESAs are, at the same time, not strengthen in their fundamental powers and governance. So our objective has been and continues to be to start trilogues on the whole package”, said European Finance Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.
For the Spanish Minister, Nadia Calviño, the separation of this part could further delay the adoption of the package, as the European Parliament is against such an approach (see EUROPE 12173). Worse still, doing so could provoke a negative reaction from Parliament, not only on this package, but also on other ongoing inter-institutional negotiations, argued the Director General of the French Treasury, Odile Renaud-Basso.
The Romanian Presidency's conclusion that its proposal was supported by a majority of Member States created a stir and led to a second round of discussions. In particular, France and the Netherlands considered that the subject should be decided by qualified majority.
This is not a formal vote, but a discussion on how to proceed, the Council's legal service has tried to clarify, thus supporting the Romanian Presidency's conclusions. In addition, responsibility for negotiations with Parliament rests with the Presidency, which simply needed to obtain sufficient support from the Member States, they said. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)