The strategic importance of the EU financial sector – How to improve assessment and evaluation

Key points

The EESC:

• points out that the banking sector has a major role in financing the economy, being a key enabler of the ambition for a more competitive economy, the strategic autonomy of the EU and the green and digital transitions;
• supports the diversity of the EU banking sector, as it contributes to its resilience. This requests a proportional approach to regulation without compromising sound capital requirements;
• welcomes the introduction of a competitiveness check, and considers that its four dimensions should be paired to the specificities of the financial sector. It should control that legislative proposals support competitiveness, job creation and sustainable growth, while respecting international standards;
• believes that the competitiveness check should scrutinise the impact of new legislation on financial markets stability, and assess how to further integrate EU financial markets, attract investment and support growth. A set of indicators should be established to assess the degree of digitalisation and the depth of funding;
• recommends that assessment and evaluation exercises analyse the impact of new legislation on investment, cross-border activity, protection of the diversity of banking business models and preservation of a level playing field;
• expresses concern that the Commission has not developed a methodology to assess the cumulative effects of legislation on competitiveness;
• considers that the representation of stakeholders in impact assessments (IAs) is poor, and calls for a greater effort to better communicate how the views of stakeholders are included in IAs to encourage participation;
• encourages the Commission to clarify the methods employed in ex-ante and ex-post impact assessments as well as to strengthen the systemic collection and monitoring of critical data to facilitate the later.