19 November 2009

CEBS Secretary General Vossen: "Towards a New Architecture for European Banking Supervision"

At the 2009 Euro Finance week, in Frankfurt, he stressed that the common EU rule book and the increased oversight of large financial institutions are very important and concrete next steps in building a new architecture for EU Banking Supervision.

Mr Vossen presented  the following main points in his speech:

·         A common EU Rule book: one of the lessons learned from the crisis is that the bank regulatory regime, built around Basel II, needs to be improved. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) and subsequently the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) have worked intensively on global regulatory responses to the crisis. Concrete proposals are expected to be finalised by the end of 2010 and should be introduced by the end of 2012.

 

·         CEBS strongly supports this reinforced oversight of cross-border banking groups, and  is actively promoting the establishment of supervisory colleges for all major large financial institutions and their effective functioning throughout Europe. In this context, CEBS has agreed that colleges of supervisors will be established and up and running for 36 of the largest cross-border EU banking groups. As regards 2010, CEBS intends to set extra targets for the establishment of supervisory colleges for an additional 10 to 20 cross-border European banking groups. Moreover, for colleges that already exist, CEBS will set targets for coordinated planning and assessment under Pillar 2. This will be done, in anticipation of new guidelines on the operational functioning of colleges of large cross-border groups and on co-ordinated risk assessment that will come into force by the end of 2010. 

 

·         The future EBA will continue to perform EU-wide risk assessments on the vulnerabilities of the EU banking system and will also have a role in testing the resilience of the EU banking sector by means of a stress test.

Full speech

 

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