EBA Banking Supervision (Regulation)

The Commission wishes to delegate key tasks of banking supervision from national banking au-thorities to the European Central Bank (ECB). The tasks of the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the voting rules in its supervisory council must be adjusted accordingly.

cepPolicyBrief

There are strong arguments in favour of centralising EU banking supervision. However, placing banking supervision with the ECB can lead to a conflict of interests in terms of monetary policies and can jeopardise the independence of the ECB. An organisational separation of monetary policies and banking supervision would infringe EU law. 

It is to be welcomed that the technical standards of EBA are binding on ECB, too. A smoothly functioning EBA and an independent ECB are not compatible. 

On the one hand, EBA’s competences infringe ECB’s independence granted by primary law. On the other hand, EBA does not have sufficient controlling rights for supervision in the Euro area. EBA is being weakened because the ECB must no longer follow its requests. There is the danger that the Euro area might dominate and exploit EBA in settlements and actions against ECB’s infringements.