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Questo articolo è stato pubblicato il 19 aprile 2013 alle ore 07:25.

My24

What is the ECB doing to be ready in time?
We are not only doing work within ECB on preparing the organization and staffing, but also very intense cooperation with national authorities. We need to lean on their wealth of experience and staff resources. We need to avoid adding an additional layer of bureaucracy at the European level, but try and reap the benefits of synergies of a single rule book that is applied uniformly across member States and therefore will in the end alleviate cross border obstacles that derive from divergent national practices. This will be the value added for financial integration.

There are some question marks about the additional staffing needs. A report from the consultants at Promontory, which the ECB commissioned, mentioned 2,000 people. What is your assessment?
Ultimately, the figure will depend on the model that will find the support of all member countries. As long as we do not know the number of participating countries and how to divide the work between the centre and the periphery, we cannot come up with a precise figure. Huge progress has been made in discussing these subjects. We have narrowed down the divergent views sufficiently to be able to come up with more precise figures in the not too distant future, as soon as we have the regulation enacted. We must distinguish the amount of people involved in the function, the amount of people who will work inside the ECB, the amount of off-site analysis and on-site, and also what part of the activities will be centralised or decentralized. This will also depend on the size and riskiness of the banks under SSM supervision. Moreover, the support functions like IT, HR, etc. will have to need more staff within the ECB to support the supervisory function. There is not a single figure that does justice to the complexity of the task. There will probably be a variety of figures according to the different criteria I just mentioned.

There was also discussion about the perimeter of action of the SSM and some States are still fighting to retain national discretion. This could lead to the kind of political interference that played a role in creating the banking problems in some countries.
In order to be efficient you should have a level playing field across Europe and to achieve that you must have the competence to move into areas where there are difficulties. We also have the principle of proportionality (do not need to move with a lot of people in areas where risk is not so evident) and of proximity (there is a lot of knowledge at the local level). One of the earliest agreements was that the ECB supervision should be risk-based. At the initial point we will start with most risk-prone banks, those with most large, cross-border activities. Locally active banks with a transparent model will be left mostly at local level. But legally we have the mandate to supervise all the banks. In practice you focus on areas where there are the highest benefits for European integration. We cannot move forward with a corner solution where everything will be at national discretion, except for responsibility which would be shifted to the European level. One should not underestimate the importance of a high-quality quantitative approach, although we shall have a mix of quantitative and qualitative supervisory approaches. For me, the amount of national discretion can only increase if criteria according to which such discretion is exercised are following a very transparent framework and constraints in which such discretion can be exercised. In such a framework of very precise, transparent, open criteria, constrained discretion does not leave room for unfounded political interference.

A single resolution mechanism needs a resolution fund. Some people fear a form of mutualization, but still you need a financial backstop.
First, the supervisors need to finalise their assessment of banks. If then action is needed, because banks have problems, we move into the area of recovery or resolution. This will have to take a decision on the basis of the prudential assessment whether the bank has a sustainable future or needs to be - partially - wound down. In the past many decisions were taken at the national level while the consequences spilled over to the European level. That is why the banking union is a superior model in that it takes into consideration the European interest.

Part Two - Cyprus bail-in »

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