Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-227"
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"en.20020313.10.3-227"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, nine months have now elapsed since the proposal for a European Commission directive on this ultra-technical but extremely topical subject was referred to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Last spring, when the bubble of the
economy burst, we were reminded that banking is a high-risk business. In the autumn, the attacks of 11 September, coupled with the steady increase in industrial accidents and in natural disasters linked to the greenhouse effect, reminded us that insurance is also a high-risk activity. The risk will become higher and higher.
For years, the European Union, like the rest of the world, has been standardising both the prudential rules that are essential to these financial activities and the forms of supervision practised by the banking and insurance authorities. We are now called upon to supplement these efforts by regulating those financial conglomerates which contain both banks and insurance companies. This is a particularly urgent task here in Europe, the continent that has pioneered insurance banking. It is made all the more urgent by the fact that the development of life assurance and all forms of capitalised pensions savings is compelling our society to run a great risk. What would happen if the long-term savings of future pensioners were engulfed in a stock-market crash? This is precisely what the present directive seeks to avoid. Its rapid adoption would do no less than make Europe the safest financial area in the world, decisively improving its competitiveness through the geographical factor used by the rating agencies.
I will not conceal the fact that, at the start of our debates, some of my honourable colleagues were loath to impose new prudential constraints on the financial sector. There were discussions, and some questioned whether it was expedient for Europe to set out its own rules before the completion of the Basle negotiations on the same subject in 2004. Such misgivings, however, were to be banished by a single event, namely the collapse of the Enron conglomerate in the United States as a result of failure to comply with the prudential rules and breakdowns in the supervisory system.
If the European Union adopted this directive, Europe would become the ‘Enron-proof’ continent, so to speak. And so the last misgivings have now melted away. Yes, the directive is needed urgently. No, it must not be watered down, either in its scope or in the rigour and transparency of the prudential rules that the authorities will have to oversee.
In the course of these nine eventful months, our committee has met with representatives of the banking and insurance professions; where the latter put forward sound arguments reflecting the public interest, the committee has managed to incorporate most of these into its position. I refer in particular to two groups of amendments, namely those that relate to the choice of calculation method and those designed to instil a degree of flexibility into capital-adequacy requirements in terms of companies’ own funds in the case of groups which are not yet conglomerates.
Lastly, your rapporteur has benefited, throughout the course of his work, from the cooperation of the Commission and of the Belgian Presidency, and latterly the Spanish Presidency, of the Council. My warm thanks are extended to both institutions. We have proved on this occasion that the three institutions of the Union are able to take very rapid concerted action when the interests of the public and of the European Union are at stake.
As I speak to you, at 5.15 p.m., I have just managed to finalise a handful of compromise amendments incorporating the key points from the amendments that were tabled last week. These seem to offer a good basis for a consensus among most of the groups and to anticipate the bulk of the compromises that will have to be made with the Council.
I therefore believe that the House will be able to adopt an almost unanimous resolution tomorrow and that the amended proposal will be very close to that which the Council will adopt. In these circumstances, I believe that one reading, or one reading and a half, if you like, will suffice for us to ratify this directive, and I shall be absolutely delighted at such an outcome. We shall avoid any new Enron-type affairs in Europe, and at the same time we shall have legislation with which we can intensify the Basle discussions by offering our new rules as a model for the rest of the world. This would yield immediate dividends by enhancing the global reputation of our financial activities."@en1
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