Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-08-Speech-2-379"
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"Madam President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, thank you for giving us the opportunity to hold this debate with the two institutions concerned. I hope, Mr Verheugen, that you will be able to report back to Commissioner Charlie McCreevy on the nature of our debate.
The third question concerns the interpretation of Article 58, which provides for restrictions on the free movement of capital on grounds of public order. As far as the Council and the Commission are concerned today, is there one interpretation that should take precedence in this area? We would like further details on this.
The fourth question is as follows: is this not a debate that has an international dimension? In our opinion, the European Union would be much better equipped and better prepared to tackle the international dimension of this debate if we had to some extent defined the position of our base camp, the position of the European Union, rather than the position of one Member State or another that might have rushed into this race, attracted by the financial possibilities.
The last question relates to the exchange rate. What is your view on the situation where the oil monarchies are currently investing in euro assets with funds from oil sales in dollars, thereby aggravating the tense exchange rate situation, with the resulting repercussions on our trade balances?
Madam President, Mr Vice-President, those are the questions the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs would like to ask and we look forward to the responses from the Council and the Commission.
For a long time we have had active sovereign wealth funds in Europe, primarily the Norwegian fund, and yet until now none of the actions of this fund had posed us any problem. Two new events have shaken up the current situation, however. The first is the constitution of important reserves by oil monarchies and countries that have accumulated trade surpluses that feed these sovereign wealth funds. The second event is of course the subprime crisis, which has shed light on the strategic role these sovereign wealth funds could play.
Previously, when these funds were used to invest here and there, particularly in the United States, their strategic character was called into question. Now, when we look at the role taken over by sovereign wealth funds from investment banks in terms of injecting liquidity or own funds, we realise that they have instead become investors of last resort.
In these conditions, emotions come into play, and that is why we wanted to ask this question. It is also undoubtedly why, unlike the Commissioner responsible for the internal market, the President of the Commission himself felt it useful and necessary to publish on 27 February a document that forms the basis of our discussions today.
We run the risk of seeing a strategy being implemented in each of the Member States that, at the end of the day, would not help to tackle the reality, which is that sovereign wealth funds have today assumed a responsibility, an active role in the capital market. As a result, this new situation to some extent places obligations on them and on us in the dialogue we wish to hold with the managers of these funds.
Therefore, on behalf of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, we would like to raise five questions today.
Firstly, we are of the impression that the Commission’s response up until now has been to say: ‘Let each Member State implement its own strategy, in terms of the transparency and governance requirements relating to these funds, and at Community level we will simply verify whether the requirements in each Member State infringe the rules of the Treaty or the rules on the functioning of the internal market’.
That does not seem to us to be the correct strategy. In our opinion, in a case like this we should instead be working towards a proactive approach and establishing coordination at Community level: on the one hand to prevent unfair competition among Member States – for it is clear that there is to some extent a race between the Member States to see who can benefit most from the sure, long-term investment capacities of these sovereign wealth funds – and, on the other hand, to define and work together on strategic or sensitive sectors that need to be preserved.
The second question relates to the problem of the registration of these funds. Would it be possible to envisage at Community level registering these funds, just as we are currently considering doing for rating agencies?"@en1
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