European Central Bank to supervise all major banks

By PERRY GOURLEY
Published on 18/08/2012 00:00

The European Commission is to propose giving the European Central Bank supervision over all of the eurozone’s major banks.

The proposal, expected on 11 September, envisages national regulators supervising day-to-day business and the ECB only intervening where it sees “dangerous risks”, sources close to the plans said.

Outside the eurozone, national banking supervisors would stay in charge of their banks.

European Union leaders agreed at the end of June to set up a single banking supervisor in Europe as a pre-condition to letting the eurozone’s rescue funds directly inject cash into lenders, without lending to a government first.

It is part of a wider EU effort to stop the banking and eurozone debt crisis feeding each other.

Stefaan de Rynck, spokesman for Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for financial services, who is drafting the proposal, said how the ECB would work with local regulators on the ground, and that the pan-EU 
European Banking Authority (EBA) watchdog still being fleshed out.

The ECB may need to have supervisory power over all banks, as not just large ones have suffered problems.

“It is hard to define what is a major bank and what is a systemic bank so we need to make sure that the supervisory system is able to cover all banks,” de Rynck said yesterday.

“The ECB has to play the pivotal role… The EBA will have to maintain a key role in terms of unity and coherence of the single market in a number of tasks there and how that relates to the new role of the ECB is what we are working on right now,” de Rynck added.

The Commission is also looking at how non-eurozone countries could opt into the banking union.

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