Brussels, 08/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 8 April, Kerstin af Kochnick presented the work of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) that she chairs to the MEPs on the EP's Political and Monetary Policy Committee. The annual meeting was held, appropriately enough, a few days ahead of the meeting of European finance ministers convened to look at boosting cooperation among national regulators when it comes to supervising cross-border financial institutions (see EUROPE 9637).
Kerstin af Jochnick started by discussing the CEBS' response to the turbulence on the money markets. This is the first crisis we have been involved in since the CEBS was set up four years ago, she said. The CEBS has focused its work on three areas - managing banks' liquidity risks; openness in banks' exposure to structured financial products; and banks' evaluation of non-liquid assets. Noting differences in the content and presentation of the information that is published, af Jochnick said it would be useful to structure the information in such a way as to make it more easily comparable. On the management of a crisis due to the collapse of a cross-border bank, she backed the idea of extending the protocol to the agreement which foresees cooperation among regulators both in terms of crisis and in normal periods.
The review of the Lamfalussy Process, particularly improving the surveillance structures and procedures involving several national regulators, is key in the CEBS' work. Kerstin af Jochnick warned, however, that the CEBS is not a surveillance body as such but rather advises the European Commission and facilitates cooperation among national regulators. Guidelines on cooperation among supervisors from home and host countries have been published with this in mind, along with a guide to the surveillance practices of colleges of supervisors. She said that boosting the legal basis of such colleges would be a welcome move (see EUROPE 9621) and described the CEBS' work to establish a common surveillance culture by encouraging training and exchanges of staff.
Quizzed by Ieke van den Burg (PES, the Netherlands) about the functioning of the Colleges of Supervisors, the CEBS president admitted that it was rather in limbo - industry approves of the guidelines on cooperation among host-home supervisors but doesn't see them put into practice in the supervisors' daily work. She said it was for the CEBS to get the colleges working for the 45 cross-border banks. In response to a question from Zsolt Laszlo Becsey (EPP-ED, Hungary) who wanted to know why the CEBS had not advised the Commission to introduce an EU surveillance authority, af Jochnick said that the national authorities were too split on the issue. She preferred to concentrate on respect of the guidelines by the colleges of supervisors because there was considerable room for improvements in this domain. Introducing a requirement in the mandate of national bank regulators to make them cooperate at EU level might help here. (M.B.)