European Court of Auditors (ECA)
High-level conference
Is the EU financial sector ready to face the next crisis and support economic recovery?
Friday 9th July 2021 | Online conference replay
The ECA high–level conference is a virtual event on financial governance in the EU. Its aim is to foster discussion about the resilience of the EU financial sector, and its readiness to face the next crisis and to support the economic recovery, in light of the comprehensive measures taken in response to global financial crisis and the lessons learned in implementing them.
The EU responded to the global financial crisis by tightening the regulation and supervision of banks, creating a framework for their orderly resolution, enhancing micro- and macro-prudential rules for banks, enhancing supervision and creating supervisory authorities. Nevertheless, challenges remained, even before the COVID pandemic struck. These included low profitability of banks, continuing high levels of non-performing loans, lack of integration and weaknesses in bank resolution and resolvability, and the need to complete the banking union and develop the capital markets union (CMU). The current health, social and economic crisis is going to test the financial sector.
This conference will be an opportunity to discuss the need for further action in the EU financial sector with esteemed speakers and panellists from the EU institutions, Member States and academia, many of whom at the time played and are still playing an important role in developing the EU’s supervisory and crisis management framework.
The ECA plays a crucial role in improving the EU institution’s performance, ensuring adequate accountability and making their management more efficient, while upholding transparency for institutional stakeholders and the public. This is particularly true in the area of EU financial governance, which is very technical and complex in nature, where an EU-wide perspective is important, and where action can be taken with a high degree of discretion and have a huge impact on public finances. Since 2014, the ECA’s Chamber IV has been doing significant work in the area of EU financial governance, and ECA Members will contribute to the discussions with ECA’s own audit findings (the links to the relevant reports can be found
here).
Outline of the sessions:
In the first session, we will look at the lessons learned from the global financial crisis, and the new regulatory tools at the disposal of policymakers, regulators and supervisors to deal with distress in the financial sector. We will look at the effectiveness of those tools, coherence in their implementation, and remaining weaknesses. Could the EU have done more/done things differently?
The second session will be devoted to discussing the current health of the EU banking sector (including strength and weaknesses and legacy issues). We will look at differences in the resilience of banks in the EU, potential negative side-effects of the decisions taken to shield the economy and financial system from the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the risks stemming from winding down the support measures. We will also discuss the readiness of the EU’s crisis management framework.
The third session will look at the role of financial sector in financing the economic recovery. We will discuss the diversification of financing sources, the evolution of non-bank financial institutions, the development of the EU equity market, and the strengthening of EU-level supervision of capital markets and CMU policy efforts.
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