To fuel Europe’s transformation, European citizens need regulations that inspire and start paving the way to prosperity. The existing European banking regulation has been designed only to ensure financial stability. Today, our objectives must be to strengthen sovereignty while funding strategic autonomy, and keep financial institutions focus on their key missions: financing the economy and transitions, whether they be environmental, technological, demographic or geopolitical.
Savings and retail banks across the continent are fully meeting the responsibility to ensure the effective financing of the economy and transitions. They do so through a model that is territorial, universal and relational — one that is grounded in proximity to people and communities, one that serves every type of client through a complete range of banking services and provides them long-term support. However, this vital contribution is being challenged: either overly complex, or misaligned with business realities, regulation impacts the competitiveness of the European banking sector and its capacity to meet those major topics; therefore, it impacts our future prosperity.
This is the reason why the 'European Savings and Retail Banking Group' (ESBG) has released a comprehensive roadmap proposing a reset. It is a clear roadmap for action. It proposes a model where regulation’s purpose is clear, proportionate in scope, and aligned with economic reality. This roadmap is based on structural suggestions grounded in the actual experiences of banks operating under today’s legal and supervisory architecture.
The ESBG recommends adopting an approach where rules take into account the diversity of our banking system models. In particular, the European savings and retail banks serve communities that are often overlooked by other financial players.
Moreover, the ESBG roadmap calls for streamlining supervisory expectations and eliminating redundant measures that add legal complexity without producing actionable insights and overlapping reporting requirements from multiple authorities.
Instead of adding up all regulations, the ESBG proposes that every new rule be subject to a “financing the economy” test — a filter that examines whether a measure will facilitate or hinder the flow of credit to households and SMEs. Our association also calls for competitiveness to be formally recognised as a supervisory objective.
If the EU wants a banking system that can deliver on its priorities, it must start by giving those banks a regulatory framework that empowers them to act. The European Commission’s “Simpler and Faster Europe” initiative finally opened the door to long-overdue simplification (see EUROPE 13578/1).
This “Reset report” is a precious contribution to that initiative. See the report : https://aeur.eu/f/hhw
Simplification is not a footnote to regulation; it is a political decision about how Europe finances its future; its environmental transition, its technological transformation, its social evolution and its strategic autonomy.
With the simplification opportunity, Europe is ready to enter a new chapter.
Nicolas Namias is President of the European Savings and Retail Banking Group, and CEO of BPCE