Quick follow-up on Dr. Draghi’s hearing of yesterday at the European parliament level, where it was proposed  to concentrate even more the banking supervision powers.

I wonder.

I wonder about the new European supervisory structure that was created at the end of 2010:

- The ESRB, the European Systemic Risk Board, chiared by Draghi which is part of the European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS), the purpose of which is to ensure supervision of the Union’s financial system.

Besides the ESRB, the ESFS comprises:

• the European Banking Authority (EBA) (Download [1.56 MB] the EU regulation);
• the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) (Download [1.58 MB] the EU regulation);
• the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) (Download [1.57 MB] the EU regulation);
• the Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs);
• the competent or supervisory authorities in the Member States as specified in the legislation establishing the three ESAs.

So I wonder. How did the Spanish banking mess come about under this new governance? How come it was not spotted in advance and prevented by these authorities? The first minutes of the EU Parliament Committeee do not allow me to establish if questions were asked by MPs on this, but it does not look like it.

When we established those financial Authorities some of us complained of the little accountability these institutions had been mandated to abide to. The role for EU Parliament supervision was reduced to a bare minimum. Independence was set to an extremely high level, greater than the one of the ECB itself.

Rather than talking about greater power and centralization of banking supervision authority shouldn’t we talk of more supervision on these authorities?