FN: Former watchdog calls for more ESMA cash

27 June 2011

Eddy Wymeersch has called for the European Securities and Markets Authority, the new super-regulator, to receive more funding. He believes the money is crucial to help ESMA implement and police a raft of new rules introduced since the credit crunch.

The chairman of the Committee of European Securities Regulators from 2007 until July last year when the agency was transformed into ESMA, said that the European Commission needed to stump up more money to allow the regulator to handle the full scope of its remit. He said: “ESMA is developing rapidly but it needs more resources and funding. It will take time for it to build up to meet its new objectives and recruit people with the necessary skill-set. These people are likely to reside in national regulators and they are loathe to lose their best practitioners.”

Wymeersch believes the issues facing the agency were symptomatic of issues across Europe. He said: “There is a wider resource problem across the European Commission, which is a concern given its workload and the number of new workstreams they have taken on”.

He pointed in particular to the internal services and markets division, known as DG Markets, which is overseen by commissioner Michel Barnier. The unit currently has vacancies for directors in three of its eight directorates as it faces responsibility for a wave of new regulation. “There are very competent acting directors in place”, an EC spokeswoman said.

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