Talletusten vakuusjärjestelmät
12.12.2007
Madam President, first I would like to thank everyone because this is a very timely issue.
We all know that ongoing financial turmoil has underlined the importance of cross-border crisis management, and the October ECOFIN decision to have more ex-ante coordination between Member States and, especially, supervisory regimes cannot be more welcome.
Banks are at the heart of the payment system and deal with the savings of ordinary consumers who are not financial professionals. Therefore, the proper functioning of the payment systems and clearing and settlement system is particularly sensitive. Many of the banks are functioning cross-border now. A scattered national regulatory framework is not adequate. Currently, not even the types of account falling under the deficit guarantee scheme???s requirements are the same in every Member State.
We should not let this become a depositors??? problem. The rapporteur, Mr Ehler, has done good work in the report and showed a lot of willingness to compromise. In particular, the report rightly emphasises the importance of eliminating distortions of competition. As the Commissioner said, it is very important to guarantee a level playing field.
However, I regret that the report finally does not address the issue of ex-ante deposit guarantee (DG) schemes. While it has been argued by the Member States having ex-post DG systems that this is a problem specific to Scandinavia and Nordic markets, this is not. It is actually anti-competitive for the whole single market on a wider scale. In fact, most schemes in Europe are ex ante. If the rules of refundability and transferability of funds paid into such schemes are not harmonised, this distorts the choice between branch and subsidiary models in the host country, and this leads to distortion of competition. So it is very welcome that the Commission is studying this matter, analysing whether there are competition distortions and making possible future recommendations in this area, especially on refundability and transferability of ex ante deposit guarantees already paid in money.
So I welcome the Commission initiative and Mr Ehler???s report but further work needs to be done. |
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