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Almunia started by looking at the work in the financial markets. The main goal in 2011 was maintaining stability amid persisting turbulence. "We continued to use State aid rules to restructure and resolve banks which needed public support to preserve financial stability, minimise the cost to public finances, and ensure that restructured banks are sufficiently viable to be able to lend to companies and households. When the sovereign debt crisis worsened last summer, we had no option but to extend the temporary State aid regime for banks into 2012. We will introduce a new permanent regime when the markets stabilise.
Under the special rules, we have decided on the viability, restructuring or resolution of 46 banks and are still working on over 25 cases. For almost four years, we have also served as a de facto crisis management and resolution authority at EU level, also addressing the structural problems that had emerged well before the crisis.
In spite of our good record, what we need is a fully-fledged resolution and supervision system at EU level. Together with an EU deposit guarantee scheme, these are the ideas behind the banking union. With this, the EU will have the right tools to effectively restructure and resolve banks so that the impact of their failures will no longer be felt by the taxpayer.
In addition, in April 2011 we launched two antitrust cases in the CDS market to look into the cooperation between different investment banks that may have adopted strategies to preserve their stronghold in the profitable over-the-counter market. Here too the control of financial market information might have played a role. The CDS cases touch upon another important issue: access to financial markets’ infrastructure. I believe that open and accessible financial infrastructure is necessary for the provision of efficient financial services to firms and investors.
We defended a competitive view of financial markets in our Deutsche Börse/NYSE Euronext decision. Payment markets are another area where we have been quite active. A recent judgment of the European Courts in the MasterCard case confirmed our findings about Multilateral Exchange Fees in credit card services. We will continue our work in this area. I will take steps in the next few weeks to move forward with our on-going investigation on VISA. In addition we should explore regulatory solutions that would provide legal certainty to the entire industry.
Earlier this year we opened an investigation into the operations of the European Payments Council in response to allegations that the interoperability standards they were developing for online payments risked foreclosing payment services offered by institutions other than banks.
We support standardisation as an essential instrument to boost efficiency and foster market integration. For this reason, we must promote fair and transparent standardisation processes. This means we cannot accept standardisation processes that are captured for the purposes of foreclosure against innovative outsiders."
Almunia went on to talk about the recent policy developments in State aid: "In December last year, the Commission approved the reform of the Services of General Economic Interest, and the first case analysed under the new rules – concerning the UK Post Office – was decided last March. This reform paved the way for a major overhaul of this policy area – the State aid modernisation initiative – which I launched just over a month ago. The spirit of the reform is to help Europe’s governments boost growth at a time when many of them need to consolidate their budgets. To this end, the regime that will emerge from the reform will encourage aid that targets market failures; has a real incentive effect; does not waste taxpayers’ money; and has no better market alternative."
He concluded by stating when the changes of the State aid modernisation initiative are to be introduced: "As we work on the review that will lead to the adoption of the new guidelines, the Commission will present its proposals to the Council to change the Procedural and Enabling regulations before the end of the year. The main elements of the package should be in place at the end of 2013 or – at any rate – within the term of this Parliament and Commission."