Countering the EU grab for the City of London

Federalist thinking on the takeover by the EU of the City of London may be read in detail from this link to a PDF Document issued by The Federal Trust last March.

The frightening detail of the exact proposals whereby National Financial Regulators will be over ruled by EU technocrats are detailed in the appendix which is reproduced below:

Financial regulation: Britain’s next European challenge?

APPENDIX
EUROPEAN FINANCIAL REGULATION:
THE PROPOSED INSTITUTIONS

The European Systemic Risk Council (ESRC) will monitor andassess potential threats to financial stability that arise from macroeconomic developments and from developments within the financial system as a whole (“macro-prudential supervision.”) The creation of the
ESRC is designed to limit the vulnerability of the European financial system to interconnected, sectoral and cross-sectoral systemic risks.

The members of the ESRC will be the President of the ECB, national central bank governors, the chairmen of the European Supervisory Authorities and a representative of the Commission. Each central bank governor will be accompanied by one senior representative of the national supervisory authorities as observer. Decisions of the ESRC will be taken by a simple majority. The de Larosière report recommends that the chairperson of the ESRC should be the ECB President. A small steering committee will prepare and administer ESRC meetings. The ECB will provide the Secretariat to the ESRC, as well as analytical, administrative and logistic support.

The ESRC will issue warnings and recommendations, whether of a general nature or to individual Member States, with a specified timeline for the relevant policy response. These warnings and/or recommendations will be channelled through the ECOFIN Council and/or the new European Supervisory Authorities. The ESRC will also be responsible for monitoring compliance with its recommendations, based on reports from the addressees.

The ESRC will not have any legally binding powers. However, the ESRC may be expected to exert major influence on the addressees of warnings/recommendations through the high quality of its analysis. The ESRC will decide in each case whether a recommendation should be kept
confidential.

The European System of Financial Supervisors (ESFS) will consist of three new European Supervisory Authorities, i.e., a European Banking Authority (EBA), a European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), and a European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA.) These new European Supervisory Authorities will take on all the missions of the current Committees of Supervisors, but in addition exercise increased responsibilities, defined legal powers and greater authority. They will also contribute to the development of a single set of harmonised rules, improve the supervision of cross-border institutions by developing common supervisory requirements and approaches and help settle possible disputes between nationalsupervisors.

The focal point for day to day supervision will remain at the national level, with national supervisors remaining responsible for the supervision of individual entities, for example with respect to capital adequacy. This reflects the contemporary reality that the financial means for rescuing financial institutions remains at the Member State level and with nationaltax payers, as the current crisis has demonstrated. The chairpersons and secretary generals of the European Supervisory Authorities are expected to be full-time independent professionals. The chairpersons will be nominated after an open competition. The appointments will be confirmed by the European Parliament and will be valid for five years.

The European Supervisory Authorities’ decisions on technical rules will be taken, through the board structure, by qualified majority based on the Treaty weighting for Member States. The European Supervisory Authorities will be accountable to the Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission.

The main tasks of the Authorities will be the following:

1. To ensure a single set of harmonised rules throughout the Union, by developing binding technical standards in specific areas and on the basis of criteria which will be specified in Community legislation; and drawing up interpretative guidelines.

2. To ensure the consistent application of EU rules.

3. To ensure a common supervisory culture and consistent supervisory
practice.

4. To exercise full supervisory powers for some specific entities, such as
credit rating agencies and EU central counterparty clearing houses.

5. To ensure a co-ordinated response in crisis situations.

6. To collect micro-prudential information.

7. To undertake an international role on behalf of the European Union.

8. To ensure that decisions taken under the above mechanisms do not directly impinge on the fiscal responsibilities of the Member States

(Emphasis added by blog editor!)
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Cameron and Clegg will therefore soon have to decide whether or not they will vote against the takeover of the City of London by the EU, given that the body of the linked document makes clear the EU will be prepared under 'enhanced cooperation' to proceed against a UK NO vote, as described in the body of the report on page 18 as follows:

If Mr. Cameron did decide to please his party, already uneasy at his refusal to hold a referendum on the now-ratified Lisbon Treaty, by refusing to endorse the institutional proposals of Mr. de Larosière, the consequences could be dramatic. The political momentum behind the proposals is such that the great majority of Member States favourable to institutional reform would almost certainly be prepared to vote down the United Kingdom in the Council on this issue. Nor can it be excluded that France and Germany in particular, whose co-ordination of policy on these matters was reaffirmed at the recent France-German Summit, might be willing to use the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions for ‘enhanced cooperation’ in order to set up the desired new institutional structure. This would be both a destabilizing setback for the Conservative Party at the beginning of its period in office, and damaging to the position of the City of London, where substantial continental European representation has come over recent years to be a constituent feature of the City’s functioning. It is difficult to believe that British self-isolation from central European financial regulatory bodies would be compatible in the long term with a continuing major European presence in the City.