Davies, H., (2013), “The Fox and the ECB”, Project Syndicate, 19 December.
A French business magazine recently ranked IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde the most internationally influential French person alive – well ahead of President François Hollande. While politics may have influenced that particular decision, there is no doubt that Lagarde is at least the most prominent French woman alive.
Lagarde’s competition in this category is not particularly stiff. Valérie Trierweiler, Hollande’s partner, came to prominence with an ill-judged political tweet about her predecessor, but has since retreated behind the Élysée Palace’s firewalls. And Brigitte Bardot is not quite the force of nature she once was.
But this may be about to change. The European Parliament has just confirmed the appointment of the Bank of France’s Danièle Nouy as the first head of the European Central Bank’s new supervisory board.
The announcement comes less than a month before the ECB takes over direct supervision of some 130 banks, representing more than 80% of eurozone bank assets, leaving only smaller national banks under the jurisdiction of local supervisory agencies. Nouy (with whom I have worked) is a knowledgeable and capable supervisor, equipped with a formidable combination of determination and charm. She will need all of these attributes and more to make Europe’s new banking system function efficiently.
The ECB was chosen as the Single Supervisory Mechanism, despite the wafer-thin legal basis (an ambiguous clause in the Lisbon Treaty) for its new responsibilities. When the Lisbon Treaty was signed, Germany was wholly hostile to giving the ECB such a role. But no one wanted to contemplate the monumental task of framing a new treaty to establish an institution with the needed authority. That process would have included popular referenda – and thus the risk that the vote might not go the Eurocrats’ way.
Despite enduring legal doubts about the ECB’s powers, the need for a central supervisor is widely agreed. The credibility of Europe’s national supervisory agencies has been irreparably damaged in recent years, owing to financial stress tests that gave clean bills of health to institutions – Laiki Bank of Cyprus and Bankia of Spain, among others – whose balance sheets were later found to have enormous holes.
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Σχετικές Αναρτήσεις
- Wolf, M., (2013), “We still need to learn the real lessons of the crisis”, The Financial Times, 19 December.
- Micossi, S., Bruzzone, G. and Carmassi, J., (2013), “The New European Framework for Managing Bank Crises”, The Centre for European Policy Studies, CEPS Policy Brief No.304, 21 November.
- Wolf, G., (2013), “Europe rightly pursues the road to a single resolution mechanism”, Bruegel, 27 November.