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The complaints are against the new European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).



UNI Europa’s objections concern the composition of the EBA and ESMA stakeholder groups. The Regulation establishing the groups require, in particular, a balanced representation of stakeholders, which is not the case.



In particular, UNI Europa asks the Ombudsman to look into the following points:

• Our analysis shows that the present composition does not fulfil the Regulation requirements and has an overrepresentation of industry representatives and an under-representation of non-industry representatives.
• Employee representatives are seriously under-represented: Only 1 out 30 on the EBA and none out of 30 on the ESMA.
• There is a distinct lack of geographical balance amongst the representatives for financial institutions.
• “Users of banking services” are represented by organisations such as rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s) or auditors (e.g. PwC). Categorising these professional banking industry providers as “users” is misleading and inappropriate.
• Both the process by which stakeholders were selected and information on the backgrounds of the members were not made publicly available. There is a serious lack of transparency.

Oliver Roethig, UNI Europa Regional Secretary, comments:



“While many European politicians have at long last acknowledged that employee and non-industry representatives are clearly under-represented in political discussions, the new authorities stick to the same old business as usual favouring the financial industry.”



“It is of the utmost importance that the financial market serves society and that society is listened to when decisions are made. With financial markets in crisis and massive job losses across Europe it is time to turn a new page. We strongly believe that the input of financial employees is fundamental to ensuring sound regulation that takes lessons from previous malfunctioning policies and, effective implementation of new initiatives. As the front line face of customer service, employees are the key to well functioning markets and policies.”



For more details please contact: Nina Johansson + 32 2 234 56 42 or Rachel Owens + 32 2 235 08 74