Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-268"
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"en.20080924.31.3-268"2
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"Mr President, I agree with all those who have stressed in this debate that we have to react; that we have to react to a very big transformation in our financial system; that we need to learn from the errors of the past; and that we need to work together – the European institutions – because, without our interinstitutional cooperation, we all know that we cannot succeed. We also need, in reacting, to work together with the other players in this game, and we know that we are talking about global financial systems. If they were not global, we would not be affected in the way we are, so we cannot forget that our leadership, our initiatives and our decisions should be followed by a high degree of consensus around our positions with the other partners and the other players. If not – let us be honest – we will pay the price of being clear but naive, and we will not be competitive in the financial industry, and we need to continue to be competitive – not only efficient, not only rigorous, not only able to learn the lessons of the past, but also to be competitive.
As I have already said in my introductory remarks – and I agree with the chair’s remarks – what I mean by reaction in the short term is to fully implement the ECOFIN road map as soon as possible – and we are on track, Mrs Berès. The assessment carried out a few weeks ago in Nice shows that we are on track in adopting the decisions of this ECOFIN. Next week we will need to put forward proposals on the Capital Requirements Directive and, in a few weeks, to the Credit Rating Agencies Directive.
In this Parliament and in the Council, the adoption as soon as possible of the Solvency II Directive is also very important. But beyond the EU’s borders the Financial Stability Forum needs to continue working very intensively; it is a very important institution at this moment – the level 3 committees of the Lamfalussy framework. We are deeply concerned – Parliament, the Commission and, I hope, also the Council – about the lack of efficiency of some reactions at this level, and these are key institutions that should work much more efficiently than when these institutions were created a few years ago – the Basel Committee, the International Accounting Standards Board – that is a key issue, as Mr Jouyet said. So, we are not alone. We have to react quickly, in an efficient way, taking into account the big problems that we are facing and, at the same time, ensuring that our leadership is followed by others – as we know is the case in many other regulatory areas.
From a structural point of view, unfortunately, we cannot decide on everything today. But it is true – and I fully agree – that the relationship between regulation and markets will change because of this crisis. It is obvious there is a regulatory failure, among things.
I think we all agree that we need to establish a more intense relationship at all levels with the US authorities, not only in our task as the Commission or the executive branches, but also Parliament with Congress, which is now a key actor in the solution of the particular problems in the USA. We need to react at the multilateral level. The real origin of all these failures in the financial systems – the excess of liquidity, the excess of risks adopted by the actors, the low risk aversion that we have seen in the past – the
in the words of Mr Jouyet – has been created by these global imbalances that the global institutions have not been able to solve so far, and we need to act, as Europeans united, to convince the other partners in the global arena that, if we are not able to adjust these global imbalances in an orderly way, they will create new problems in the future, and we need to coordinate ourselves within the EU in a more clear and efficient way.
We are living in an economic and monetary union. We have an internal market, we have an action plan for integration of financial services, but we still have a lot of internal barriers and inefficiency. I think all of us should be aware that this will require more European integration and not more national reactions or defensive attitudes from the Member States.
Beyond this, we need to keep in mind what our challenges are for the medium to long term, and we need to preserve, in this very difficult environment, the Stability and Growth Pact, the Lisbon Strategy, and the energy and climate change strategies, which are extremely important now. We cannot afford to forget that we are facing not only very difficult short-term challenges from the point of view of financial markets, but also big challenges over the medium to long term for the world economy and for our own future.
One last word: this was not in the road map but will be on the agenda of the next ECOFIN, and the Commission will fully agree with this issue. We need to think about the systems of remuneration of executives, directors and CEOs and all those who can create trends and who can adopt decisions in the markets. I will tell you one thing – and this is also addressed to the Council – in 2004 the Commission – and in particular my colleague Charlie McCreevy – put forward a recommendation asking the Member States to adopt decisions in this regard, to avoid wrong incentives. We have been considering what has happened since then, during the last four years. Only one out of the 27 Member States reacted positively to this recommendation from the Commission point of view. So the Commission fully agrees now with this consensus to touch upon these important issues as well."@en1
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