Are you satisfied with the architecture of the banking union and specifically with the powers and competencies of the Resolution Mechanism?
Don’t you feel that they have been dictated too much by political compromises?
For instance the competence of your organization to intervene is drastically restricted in Germany as contrasted to other countries like France, for instance.
Will not this affect comparability of treatment across banks in different member states?
Also, how confident are you that political criteria will not affect the decisions that the Resolution Board will need to take?
If the push comes to shove, won’t you find yourself stronger in dealing with problems of banks from Malta say, or Cyprus, but more cautious when you deal with big banks from Germany or France?
Finally, do you envisage that there will be need for coordination and cooperation between the SRM and the IMF?
If yes, how do you see that such cooperation could develop?
Thank you.
Mrs Elke König reply:
“Competences to intervene, I think we all have seen graphs in the press about the fairly complex mechanism. I am a very pragmatic person, I have to leave with what is available. There might be a review clause at some point when politically does might decide there is a better version to that. But to be fair for me that this makes it just so important that we are proactive, that we look for resolvability assessment and don’t just sit there to wait for the famous weekend. How confident am I that the political pressure will not be felt different, when it comes to small versus larger countries, or small versus larger banks. I think we are committed to the European clause and to a level playing field, which for me means proportionality also in resolution planning. You don’t need the same plan for fairly smaller, less complex banks that you might need for the big banks, very international banks but clearly the system holds through for everyone, including if need be, if you have to unwind the banks. I would think that’s a bit up to personal feelings. It is very hard to press me to do something which I think is not reasonable and the last one you mentioned the IMF, if I understood you correctly I think it would be very important for the SRB, or for the SSM to really be as I said a European voice in discussion, which is by far more technical in solving any kind of remaining obstacles to resolution especially cross-border obstacles to resolution, especially when it comes to arguments that something is going wrong and you have lot of people that have good ideas, I tend to listen to good ideas but then to be fairly clear and I hope the board will be fairly clear in what we think is the right way forward and we will propose that and see what we get. But it is always a bit difficult to see what are you doing if you get into that situation.”
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