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Discussions between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), Council and Commission on EU financial supervision are finally moving ahead after having been under way for several weeks.



According to Financial Times, negotiators within the Trialogue made surprising progress yesterday towards new structures for supervision in the banking, insurance and securities market sectors.



The challenges have been to reach consensus between the European Parliament and Member States on what powers should be given to the three European Supervisory Authorities in charge of these three different sectors. The European Parliament is in favour of a strong European approach , whereas the Council is keen to ensure that decisions of the authorities will not impinge on national fiscal autonomy.



UNI Europa Finance welcomes the development towards a conclusion of the negotiations. "It is important that a decision is reached on this matter so that the European supervisory framework can be up and running from 2011 as planned", said Oliver Röthig, Head of UNI Finance. "However, the Parliament has suggested essential improvements of the text in terms of strengthening the European approach, and it is important that these improvements are not overruled by national interests of the member states".



Essential to the new Supervision framework is furthermore a stronger involvement of stakeholders in the work of the new European Supervisory Authorities. "This is clearly a step forward", said Oliver Röthig. "Representatives of finance employees will have seats in consultative committees to the European Supervisory Authorities. This will provide an opportunity to finance employees to raise awareness of possible inappropriate practices in finance institutions. This will be valuable information to supervisors when they make their risk assessments of the companies", he said.