Finance Watch’s Secretary General, Christophe Nijdam, gave a speech at the European Commission’s public hearing on the Public hearing on the “Call for Evidence on the EU regulatory framework for financial services – understanding the interactions and cumulative impact of legislation” on 17 May 2016.
Watch the video of Christophe Nijdam’s speech (15 minutes):
Key points:
- The financial crisis was caused by too little regulation, not too much.
- There is no trade-off between economic growth and financial stability.
- It is too soon to review regulation that has not been fully implemented.
- Prudential reforms have not delivered economic and financial stability or clear and simple rules, or restored trust, for example:
- Tier 1 bank capital is too complex and is not trusted by financial markets; a leverage cap would be better.
- There has been no bank structure reform to tackle too-big-to-fail banking.
- Promoting securitisation under CMU could increase interconnectedness and procylicality.
- It is incoherent to promote financial stability at the same time as rules that boost financial risk-taking.