Barnier: Introductory remarks at the informal ECOFIN Council

01 April 2014

Barnier said the Commission was ready to cooperate with EU Finance Ministers, the ECB and EIB to tackle Europe's needs and problems. He cited i.a. a European savings product that could be used to facilitate SME funding and the categorisation of "good" and "bad" securitisation.

Translated from the French

"When you put the problems, needs and opportunities in Europe next to each other, there are a number of projects that the Commission is ready to engage in, together with the EU Finance Ministers and the help of the ECB and EIB.

What do we propose? An action plan will be divided into several projects:

• Appropriate implementation of prudential and regulatory systems for banks and insurance companies with proper calibration of the Solvency II and CRD IV prudential bank controls. This calibration should encourage long-term investments.
• We will conduct an analysis of all existing private savings schemes like in Italy and Germany in order to see if we could add a European savings product that might mobilise savings available and channel them towards the needs of businesses.
• We should work better in cooperation with public investment banks, including the EIB.
• In Europe, 75 per cent of the economy is financed by banks, on a European market that is too fragmented. We will continue to rely on banks and will urge them to lend to the economy - but we can also diversify funding sources. A way of diversification is to make capital markets more accessible to SMEs: in the MiFID Regulation, for example, we encourage financial markets to make particular offers to SMEs.
• Securitisation has also been cited on several occasions recently, among them by the ECB as an opportunity that we must use, with caution, for the financing of SMEs. The action that the Commission intends to carry out in connection with EIOPA and the ECB in this context is to promote the development of a distinction between 'good' and 'bad' securitisation. We will encourage transparency and standardisation of products and be strict about the qualification of the underlying assets.
• Promote better visibility for investors for infrastructure projects, whether institutional investors, private, European or foreign. A single portal, with a database of information on the profitability of infrastructure projects, which would better calibrate prudential burden for institutional investors, could be very useful.
• And finally we have presented a Directive revising the 2003 directive on institutions for occupational pension provisions to consolidate good governance and improve transparency.

Full speech (in French)

See also: Commission roadmap to meet the long-term financing needs of the European economy, 27.03.2014

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