Bankers in the EC

In an article written by the French journalist Jean Quatremer, writing for Liberation, the thorny issue of who is to come up with Europe’s new financial regulation raises an important question: where is civil society?

“Would the Commission bring bank robbers together with judges and police officers to come up security guidelines for banks? Although this comparison may bring a smile, it is exactly what European executives are doing in the field of financial regulation” says the journalist in an blog post published earlier this month.

“Financial legislation currently being introduced in Europe is based on a report commissioned by the European Commission and submitted on February 25, 2009”, continues the article. The authors of the report? A group of “experts” chaired by Jacques de la Rosiere, former head of the Banque de France and current advisor to the CEO of BNP Paribas. The experts, all of whom at some point or other also held jobs in the public sector include: Rainer Masera, formerly Lehman Brothers; Otmar Issing, Goldman Sachs and Onno Ruding, Citigroup as well as Callum McCarthy, the former president of the British Financial Services Authority, who was famous for opposing restrictive regulations. That such experts be chosen should not surprise us, says the journalist sarcastically, quoting Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier: “Who else should we have consulted? They are the best in a field which is terribly technical, after all there are virtually no civil society experts in the field of financial matters”.

But surely the Commissioner can’t be right in saying that civil society lacks the expertise to consult on financial matters? According to the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation, ALTER EU, he isn’t. The Brussels-based coalition founded in 2005 that represents over 160 public interest groups regularly denounces the financial lobbyists at work in Brussels, starting with a 2009 report called The role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation, which proves that EU advisory committees are dominated “head and shoulders” by the financial world. According to ALTER, only 8% of expert advisors come from trade unions, 4% from consumer organizations and 4% from the academic world, suggesting that plenty of other experts would be available if only they were summoned.