UNI Europa feedback to European Commission Review of the European Supervisory Authorities
As previously stated by UNI Europa Finance (UEF), we welcome the work by the Commission in fine-tuning the practicalities around the ESAs and their mandates. Having read through the documents accompanying the ESA review, UEF would like to highlight the following points.
To UEF, the expanded mandate of ESMA seems like a good idea, especially in regard to the supervision of ESG implementation.
Concerning convergence of supervision between the ESAs, it is important that this does not lead to over regulation nor the inability of countries to decide on stricter national rules. In UEF’s opinion, maintaining the possibility for countries to implement stricter rules internally should not be prevented as it would not jeopardise the stability of the financial system. This also extends to labour relations, where the ESAs in any case have no mandate in regulating. As has already been raised by UEF in several occasions, the ESAs should not on their own, nor at the behest of the Commission, seek to limit the possibilities of social partners to conduct collective bargaining in the different countries. Concerning the stakeholder groups present in each of the ESAs, it is important that a balance is struck ,when selecting new candidates, between expertise and representativeness. While it is important to have stakeholders with sufficient knowledge in the field to be able to follow the discussions in the meetings, it is also important that the bar for expertise requirement is not set so high that no candidates can be found outside of the industry. In connection with this point, it is also UEFs suggestion to reformulate the maximum timespan allowed as member of the SMSG to maximum of 8 years, rather than the current formulation of 2 mandates. If the wording “maximum two mandates” is kept, that would exclude members of the current stakeholder groups, who are in their second term, from the possibility to reapply, although they have completed only 2x 2,5 years = 5 years. With “maximum 8 years”, they could reapply or serve as replacement for another 3 years. That would enhance the continuity, be particularly useful for stakeholders (other than experts) and hence be to the benefit of the stakeholder group as a stakeholder group rather than an expert group. We would also suggest that an ad hoc procedure is provided to this effect, in case the new legislation is not yet finalized at the time of the renewal of the stakeholder groups.
Staying on the subject of the stakeholder groups, it is still UEFs opinion that a reshuffling of the amount of mandates given to each interest group could be beneficial. As it stands, the industrial side still holds a significant portion of seats. Increasing the number of seats allocated to other interests, among them trade unions and consumer representative organisations would go a long way to ensure legislation being beneficial for all parties involved.As far as employee representations is concerned, we believe that our contribution has been particularly useful on the following issues: (i) issues that had to do with knowledge and experience requirements of staff, as well as training; (ii) issues that had do with the implementation ‘on the field’, a reality check extending beyond ICT concerns and including issues referring to staff (iii) issues referring to remuneration; incentives, targets (iv) discussing priorities for supervisory convergence. We would like to stress that we consider ourselves to be independent of any other stakeholder group, be it the industry or the consumers.
So to summarise, it is the hope of UEF, that the Commission will take this opportunity to make the ESAs even more representative of all the different stakeholder views and will create a structure that has a clear mandate within which to operate, in order to avoid resources being spent on forays into legislative areas where the European institutions have no established mandate.