Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-22-Speech-1-105"
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"en.20080922.19.1-105"2
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"Madam President, one of the latter speakers, in furtherance of his argument, made the point – but I am sure he did not mean me to use it against him – when he said, people should not be blinded by their own dogmatism.
In the area of the Capital Requirements Directive, as people who follow this in the ECON Committee will know, since the time we put through the Capital Requirements Directive, left over from that were a number of areas which we said we would deal with in an amended Capital Requirements Directive in the autumn of 2008. This is well over a year, 18 months ago.
Then we have added on to that, in particular, other areas, such as the cross-border supervision of financial groups, about which we finally got some type of conclusions from the ECOFIN Council some months ago, and I have signalled what I am intending to do in the question of the ‘originate and distribute’ model. It goes a long way towards what I signalled were my intentions some months ago – what I want to do – and I put forward some propositions; it is reflected in Mr Rasmussen's report, which is more or less in the same idea as myself in this particular regard. But I will tell you this before it comes before the relevant committee: the Members of Parliament – if form is anything to go by in the past – will be representing the position of a lot of their own Member States, which is very much anti what I have put forward there.
So the proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating. There is no point in supporting Mr Rasmussen's report in this particular area and then, on the other hand, when the specific questions come before Parliament in the form of a proposition – which I am putting forward also in the next couple of months and which many months ago I signalled I was going to do – if Members of Parliament then take their own national positions, representing the views of some of the banking firms in their own country and some of the views of the governments of the Member States, then this will not necessarily be a very good idea.
Again I appeal for some type of rational approach, and at least some coherence. I very much respect the opinions of people who are consistent in all of this: people who say, ‘I do not think that is a particularly good idea’, and follow it through by saying it here in Parliament and when they go before the committee and stick with that position.
But where I do have difficulty is with people who in the main go along with some advancement in some of the areas which are referred to and then, when it gets down to a specific proposal, go back and more or less represent the views of their own Member State’s position or of institutions in their own Member State.
But this particular city is probably the headquarters of the world lobbying industry. I have heard different figures over the years as to whether there are more lobbyists here than there are on Capitol Hill in Washington, but there is not much between them in any event.
So I will be interested, when some of the ideas which I am bringing forward, which I have signalled for some time and which are now in the public domain (there has been consultation about it, the papers have been out and everybody knows some of these propositions in the areas which have been referred to) – when, in the next very short while, these propositions come before Members of the European Parliament – whether all the Members who spoke so heavily for some changes in the wider area, when it comes down to specifics, will follow through and support what is here.
We have taken good note of the points identified in both the Rasmussen and Leinen reports. As I promised in my earlier remarks, we will respond to this in more detail in the context, as provided for in the framework agreement. Mr Rasmussen asked me if that would be before the end of this year – I think a couple of months ago he said that, hopefully, by the end of the year we would be able to respond – and I promised him we would be able to respond.
But in response to the gentlemen who spoke about how everyone should not be blinded by their own dogmatism, I think he might be referring to the other side of the argument. I ask people on that side of the House not to be blinded by their own dogmatism either.
The danger in this particular debate is to try and get a balanced solution to the problems that we now have. In the main, the report, which has been amended considerably from the initial ideas put forward by Mr Rasmussen, makes a genuine attempt, in my view, to have a balanced approach to this whole area. But many of the contributors to the debate here in this House want to have an unbalanced approach to it, and that is not reflective of what was in the report.
Some – many of the speakers from one side of the argument, in particular – see the current financial turmoil and the difficulties which there undoubtedly are as the great opportunity to regulate everything out of existence, and the great danger is going to be, both nationally and in Europe in particular, that a very unbalanced approach is going to be taken to this.
I think Mr Purvis put his finger on the pulse when he made reference to the fact that the supreme irony of this particular financial crisis has been that it was the most heavily regulated sector, namely banks, that got themselves and the rest of us into considerable difficulty, and that it was not the activities of private equity or hedge funds that caused any of these problems at all. In fact many of them suffered considerable losses as a result of the things that happened in other areas.
I certainly will take on board what Mr Purvis said about looking at what the incidence of short selling contributed to the demise of some of these institutions as against what long-term disposals by long-term investors have contributed to it. I suspect that Mr Purvis knows the answer nearly as well as I do, which is that, in those two particulars which he has referred to, it will not be short sellers that will be deemed to be the problem in this area: it was long-term investors, rightly getting rid of long-term positions, because they felt that a particular institution was not on a sound financial footing.
But, be that as it may, I think the Rasmussen and the Leinen reports as they have come before us are a genuine attempt to look at all of these particular areas in a balanced way. And I am prepared to do that. For a number of months – for nearly a year now – I have signalled that I am going to do something in the area of credit-rating agencies. As far back as last November/December, I started the process by writing to CESR, posing them a number of questions, finally getting reports from them this year, and ESME and other bodies, as well. And having received all of that, I will be putting forward a proposal before Parliament and the Council in the next couple of months. Credit-rating agencies are referred to in this particular in the Rasmussen report.
I also have been making efforts for well over a year to try and get some semblance of order into the idea of colleges of supervisors or a better regulatory system for cross-border financial institutions.
Anyone that has been following this particular debate is very much aware that there has not been universal agreement or anything near it among the Member States. The proposal which is currently before the ECON Committee under the rapporteurship of Peter Skinner, namely the Solvency II Directive, and the ideas I put forward there about cross-border supervision of insurance companies and the considerable advancement there as to supervision, has run into considerable opposition from a large number of Member States and from a large number of parliamentarians in this House who are affecting the views of the supervisors and in their own Member States. And, even though the call in the main in this House is for better cross-border supervision, when a test is put in front of them as to what I should do about it to have a more coherent approach to cross-border supervision, they go back and represent their national positions.
So let us have a little bit of honesty in all of this particular debate and in all of these debates."@en1
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