31 January 2006

FBE response on Questionnaire on the functioning of the Lamfalussy process

The European Banking Federation issued its response to the IIMG questionnaire stating that many problems concerning the consultation practice are a result of insufficient time being allocated to the process. The FBE therefore support the IIMG’s recommendation that CESR should be given 12 months for completing pieces of technical advice, as a general rule, and that it should allocate three months to the market for consultation on each given mandate, to be supplemented with a second round of consultation. Equally, transitional and grandfathering provisions will have to be considered in specific cases where the market transition will otherwise be too disruptive.

FBE is also concerned that the rules at Levels 2 and 3, in particular, are often far too detailed and there is therefore there is a real danger of overregulation. Particularly, Level 3 should not become a new layer of regulation.

Furthermore, FBE calls to re-visit the consultation standards established by CESR. In numerous situations in the past it would have been helpful to have clearer benchmarks than those existing. Any re-visiting of the standards for consultation should allow for different situations and thus focus on those principles that are necessary for ensuring good consultation practices in a systematic way.

Also, FBE strongly encourages the Commission to make best possible use of transposition workshops so that Member States can exchange views on how best and how consistently to transpose Single Market legislation. The outcomes of these transposition workshop meetings should be made public.

The “more frequent use of regulations” should be reconsidered FBE believes that the choice of instrument at Level 2 should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Voice of the European banking sector
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