Is the EU failing?

‘Are recent efforts by the EU to regulate financial industries failing?’ Myriam Vander Stichele (senior researcher at SOMO) and Jasper Blom (former ECB employee and now scientific director of the Bureau de Helling, GroenLinks) tried to answer this question on 28 October at an event organised by Real World Economics in Amsterdam. Rodrigo Fernandez, researcher at SOMO, moderated the debate.

This Real World Economics session critically unpacked recent efforts by the EU to regulate financial industries, and discussed key components of the proposed EU Banking Union and other legislative proposals and initiatives that aim to regulate banks. According to Myriam Vander Stichele, the EU is missing various opportunities for financial reforms. This is mainly because a pre-crisis model is still being held up and financial reforms are extremely fragmented. To avoid the reproduction of the same problems in the future, she proposed to focus on the flawed obsession with competitiveness and the very undemocratic and non-transparent decision-making process: “The sector responds to complexity with more complexity and leaves little to no room for civil society to monitor and influence these processes”.

No Growth Society

Jasper Blom focused on the link between the Euro-crisis and the climate crisis. The proposals he made were focused on the inclusion of environmental risk in credit risk assessments, thus tackling the unfavourable investment climate and the lack of credit history of green companies. He emphasized that this stage of ‘Sustainable Growth’ is only a necessary step towards a possible ‘No Growth Society’. After the lectures, other prospects for tackling the root causes of financial instability, bank insolvencies and risk taking were discussed with the public.

More information about the lecture and the speakers can be read here(opens in new window) .