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07 October 2014

Second Hill Hearing at European Parliament, 7 October 2014


Hill sets out what steps the Commission plans to take to integrate the EU's national markets for capital and SME funding. Video of the second hearing and FT and EV comment.

Financial Times: Lord Hill poised to win approval as EU financial services chief

Britain’s Lord Hill is poised to secure confirmation as the EU’s financial services chief after winning over critics at a hearing where he vowed to help prevent the UK leaving the EU.

The Conservative peer was recalled for a second public grilling after failing to impress the European Parliament last week with his grasp of the brief – an unprecedented move by MEPs that raised alarm in London.

After a more assured and overtly political 90-minute performance on Tuesday, with no obvious technical mistakes, senior MEPs on the vetting committee said Lord Hill was on the brink of being approved.

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

European Voice: Hill enjoys smooth second hearing

Jonathan Hill, the European commissioner-designate for financial stability, appears to have done enough to secure approval from the European Parliament, after easing MEPs’ doubts about his grasp on the financial services dossier during a second hearing today (7 October).

Many MEPs asked Hill similar questions to the ones that they had asked in the first hearing almost one week ago. Only on this occasion he gave much more detailed answers.

Asked about what he would do to integrate the EU’s fragmented market for capital, he said: “We need to create a single market for European financial instruments [and] we need to deepen the single rule book.” In particular, he said that the European Commission would have to consider reforming laws on company securities and insolvency laws.

Elisa Ferreira, a centre-left Portuguese MEP, asked Hill whether he would propose a single deposit guarantee scheme to slow into the EU’s new banking union, echoing the question she had asked at the start of October.

Hill said that he believed that a single deposit guarantee scheme ought to be a part of banking union. But, given that the Commission only recently decided not to integrate national deposit guarantee schemes into a single European one, Hill said that he did not think there would be political support for it in the short term.

Nonetheless, one clear area of friction remained. Hill refused, in response to questions from Marisa Matias, a left-wing Portuguese MEP, and Sven Giegold, a German Green MEP, to name which companies he had lobbied for in the past.

Full article on European Voice (subscription required)



© Financial Times


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