News

The President addressed the ETUC mid-term conference in Paris on 27-28 May. He explained that UNI Finance since the summer 2007 has been calling for a reform of the global financial system putting forward concrete demands on more transparency, better regulation and more coordinated supervision. The bottom-up approach is a direct response to the miserable failure of the traditional approach to supervision and companies’ risk management systems has failed badly.



Allan also told the delegates that UNI Finance had managed to get its views across in fora such as the G20, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD in close collaboration with both ITUC and the ETUC. He stressed, however, that more efforts were needed to influence the newly established Financial Stability Board, which will play a central role in a new global supervisory system. Allan reminded the conference that the former Financial Stability Forum had failed its purpose to ensure stability, transparency and provide early warning. Finally, the issue of the high degree of foreign ownership in the finance sector in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states was also highlighted. Many Eastern European countries are not only hard hit by the economic recession; they also risk being left without a banking sector at all, if foreign banks follow the trend of returning to base, i.e. withdrawing their operation in these countries.



The Paris Declaration of the ETUC is available online at:

http://www.etuc.org/IMG/pdf_Paris_Declaration_FINAL_EN.pdf