He presented the following key priorities of ESMA for the first years:

 

• Firstly, it is essential for us to build effective supervision of credit rating agencies (CRAs). At this stage, CRAs are the only financial institutions that are directly supervised by a European Supervisory Authority and we will therefore set the benchmark for the future. It is also foreseen that ESMA will have this direct supervisory responsibility regarding trade repositories.

• Secondly, ESMA has a major role in contributing to the European single rule book. We will strive to deliver high quality technical standards, respecting the sometimes extremely challenging deadlines.

• Thirdly, ESMA has been entrusted with new innovative powers in the area of consumer protection in order to promote transparency, simplicity and fairness in the markets for consumer financial products and services. We have a new set of tools at our disposal, ranging from warnings to prohibitions and restrictions. The latter will be exceptional and will only apply when a financial activity threatens financial stability or the orderly functioning and integrity of financial markets. We are conducting work at the moment to form our future policies and procedures in this important area.

• Fourthly, ESMA has a key role in contributing to financial stability by monitoring, assessing and measuring systemic risk. This role is discharged in cooperation with the European Systemic Risk Board and the two other European Supervisory Authorities for banking and insurance.

• The last point he emphasised is ESMA’s role in ensuring a level playing field in financial supervision. It is essential to avoid regulatory competition in the future. In this area, ESMA has also been granted with powers of intervention, including the possibility of addressing cases where it considers that Union law has been breached.

Full speech