Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-08-Speech-3-008"
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"Madam President, honourable Members, I, in turn, after Mr Reynders, would like to say a few words about our approach to this Ecofin Council meeting. I will do so on behalf of my fellow Commissioners, Olli Rehn and Algirdas Šemeta, who participated in this work with me.
Based on these ideas, then, we presented the contents of a toolbox, which included resolution funds. In this respect, I would like to emphasise the equally very important work that Mrs Ferreira has done on your behalf. In October, I will issue a communication based on the views of Parliament and Mrs Ferreira and on the reactions from the Council of Ministers. Why in October? Because by then, we will also have made progress on the important Basel process, with the obligations of qualitative and quantitative capitalisation of own funds.
You all know that when we speak of contributions by banks or prevention in banks, all the pieces have to be put together, and we have to pay attention to what I have called the ‘sizing’ of these measures to ensure that they are effective and that no one escapes from them. It will not be business as usual, but at the same time, we must not penalise the economy without looking at the cumulative effect of all these measures.
In October, therefore, I will issue a communication on the prevention of future crises and the responsibility of the banks and the resolution fund, ideas about which are progressing, since Germany has just implemented this idea. Sweden had already done so. We are going to try to build a coordinated system with a common core, which will avoid poor coordination, or even competition, and double taxation on banking establishments.
As Mr Reynders said, a debate has just begun. This one, on taxing financial transactions at a global level, is much more difficult. The debate started in the G20. Not everyone was enthusiastic. Many of us think that it is a fair idea and that, in a modest but effective way, financial transactions ought to be able to contribute to the funding of a number of major worldwide challenges to make the world a fairer and therefore more stable and secure place. This world we live in will only be more secure if it is fairer, which is not the case today.
We are well aware of all the challenges – like the environment, climate change and food – and the crises, which, moreover, hit the poorest countries the hardest. Many of us think it is a fair idea, but it is a long way from gaining a consensus in the Council of Ministers, to say the least. We will have to carry on working on it. My fellow Commissioner, Algirdas Šemeta, has written an initial information memo and, on the basis of the work done in the Council of Ministers, we will draw up a new communication on taxation of the financial sector in particular. This communication is scheduled for October.
I will not repeat what Mr Reynders has said about the stability and convergence programme, the efforts made by the Commission and the work done by the task force. I will just mention the idea – which I find useful – of a European Semester, which will put the budgetary analysis of each of our countries into perspective while preserving their sovereignty, and will provide a snapshot – another European radar screen – of the countries’ general economic policy guidelines. The Council will also work on the basis of the Commission’s papers and reports on this subject.
At dinner, Mr Reynders raised two points for discussion, which I will describe in brief. One of them, which concerns me and all of us here, is the operation of the IASB, the International Accounting Standards Board. We would like to see a reform of its governance and greater transparency. I have also told the Presidency that I am ready to table a report of interest to Parliament about transatlantic regulation at the September informal Council meeting.
We are not alone within the G20, and not even among Americans and Europeans, but it is extremely important for us to ensure that there is parallelism between the measures taken under President Obama’s authority by the US Congress and the measures taken by Europe as regards supervision and regulation.
I am currently setting up a kind of scoreboard comparing what is being done in the United States at the moment with what we are doing in Europe to ensure such parallelism. It is a question of achieving the same objectives without necessarily using the same methods or measures. I believe it will be a useful tool for the ministers and for the Members of this Parliament.
Four points marked this meeting, as the Belgian minister has pointed out. Since Parliament has played a very large part in this, please allow me to begin with a major subject that I consider structural and to which I have devoted much of my energy ever since you placed your trust in us in February. I am talking about supervision.
That is because supervision is the cornerstone, the framework within which, brick by brick, week after week, product after product, market after market or actor after actor, we will be able to learn the lessons of the crisis and put in place intelligent regulation and effective supervision, so that at the end of the journey – and we are not there yet – no actor, no product, no market and no territory will escape from intelligent regulation and effective supervision.
Allow me to offer a very sincere word of thanks on this subject – and I am confident that Parliament will, in turn, be able to adopt the outcome of the trialogue in a few weeks’ time – to your rapporteurs, Mr García-Margallo y Marfil, Mr Skinner, Mr Sánchez Presedo, Mrs Goulard, Mr Giegold, Mr Tremosa i Balcells and Mr Balz, and to the committee chair, Mrs Bowles, who managed this trialogue with great determination. I would also like to say that the Belgian President-in-Office, Mr Reynders, played a highly personal and proactive role, relying not only on the work of his team, but also on the work that the Spanish and Swedish Presidencies had done before him.
I would also like to point out, ladies and gentlemen, that the initial reason behind this Commission proposal on supervision was the highly intelligent work carried out by Jacques de Larosière to draw the first main lesson from this crisis. As a result, on 1 January, we will have some European bodies. The Commission will work hard, as is its duty, to prepare the implementation of these three authorities and the European Systemic Risk Board. I talked about European radar screens and control towers. These are clearly needed because, as we know, half of the banks in half of the countries of Europe, which you represent, are based in other countries. Therefore, we are generally dealing with financial establishments that are transnational in nature and, consequently, have systemic dimensions and risks.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Presidency and to offer my very sincere thanks to Parliament and your rapporteurs for the essential work that they put in to make this ‘very first stage’, as Mr Reynders put it, a success. Now the building work begins.
You will see that we will be filling out this framework week by week. Starting next week, I will put forward the regulation on derivatives and the regulation on short selling, and then, a little later on, the one on credit rating agencies.
There are two points for debate that also concern the financial sector, in relation to ideas about contributions and taxation. One is more advanced than the other, and I agree with the Belgian President-in-Office that we should not mix up the two subjects, as they are different, even though they both concern financing by the financial sector.
The first is this idea of resolution funds. This is a debate that has already begun in the Council. I must tell the honourable Members that these Council debates are very useful, as I saw for myself yesterday, because the table rounds help one begin to see things a little more clearly. I opened this debate under the Spanish Presidency in Madrid at an informal Council meeting, when I presented the idea of a toolbox for preventing crises in the banking and financial sector with two simple ideas. The first is that prevention is always cheaper than the cure – that is true for the environment and for financial crises as well – while the second simple idea is that taxpayers should no longer be in the front line, because the banks should pay for the banks."@en1
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