What Sharon Did Last Week (2nd - 6th May)
Monday
Having travelled over to Brussels on Sunday night, Sharon started the week at a conference held at the Commission entitled "Financial Integration and Stability: Strengthening the Foundations for Integrated and Stable Financial Markets", at which Sharon gave a speech in the high-level panel alongside Commissioner Barnier, Commissioner Rehn, Vitor Constancio (ECB vice-president), Mario Draghi (Financial Stability Board chair and Italian Central Bank governor) and Andrea Enria (Chair of the European Banking Authority). The theme was to address next steps in the reform of financial regulation in the EU. Her speech is available here. She was particularly glad that Commissioner Barnier made special reference to growth now being a priority of the Commission, and looks forward to working with him to ensure this happens across the EU: as she has always said that this is the best way to come out of the economic crisis.
In the afternoon,Sharon had a brief meeting with one of the rapporteurs on the Economic Governance "6 pack" along with the ECON secretariat who deal with the administration of the committee. She then chaired the ECON Committee which saw the public hearing of the two vice Chairs of the newly created European Systemic Risk Board, Mervyn King (of course, also Governor of the Bank of England) and Andrea Enria (also Chair of the European Banking Authority).Sharon thought they both gave good answers to questions from Members on areas such as stress tests, backstop measures and bank recapitalisation, the role of the scientific committee on the ESRB and also the potential conflict between prudential supervisors and central bankers within the ESRB. The hearing was web streamed and still available as are all committee meetings.
After the hearing, the Committee continued with a discussion of amendments for the report on audit policy; and the ECB annual report. After Committee ended,Sharon returned to the office to meet with Hungarian Junior Minister of State for Economy András Kármán to discuss the Economic Governance package.
Tuesday
Tuesday began with an Economic Governance trialogue, going over the horizontal aspects in the six legal proposals. These negotiations will be lengthy, this meeting was 3 hours, and there are some 15 further similar sessions already lined up.
After this,Sharon went to a meeting of the UK Liberal Democrat MEPs, where they discussed the state of play ahead of the local elections and AV referendum on Thursday.
Over lunchtime, Sharon had a meeting with the Chief Risk Officer of Zurich Insurance Company, who is also the current Chair of the insurers´ CRO forum, to discuss Solvency II and Omnibus II, which are two directives looking at the capital adequacy regime for the European insurance sector. The new European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority is charged with proposing the next phase of implementing measures on Solvency ll. The latest set of impact studies is causing concern that there is a big deviation in capital requirements computed under the standard model and internal models. The concern is that EIOPA is moving beyond the economic treatment that was key to the basic Solvency ll Directive. This is not new to Sharon - indeed she has tackled the issue before and a reference to it features in her recent speech at the inauguration of EIOPA where she reminded them she had had to tell their precursor body CEIOPS off from time to time!
After this meeting,Sharon sat down with her assistant Siobhán and the ECON secretariat to discuss the next steps for the "credit agreement relating to residential property", or responsible lending, or the mortgage credit directive - which are all the new names for the recently proposed legislation on mortgages. Two other Committees are also interested in having a say on the matter and soSharonhas to engage in what she calls 'committee wars' to sort out which parts are relevant to which committees.
Later in the afternoon, Sharon met with six several representatives from the IMF who came to discuss the whole range of financial services legislation and economic governance. It turns out they are avid readers of all her speeches and agree with her!
Finally,Sharon sat down with her assistant Constance to go through the latest stage of negotiations on the report on derivatives "EMIR".
Wednesday
On Wednesday morning,Sharon attended ALDE group, which included a heated debate over the newly proposed transparency register. This would encourage lobbyists and industry participants to sign up to a register which would be made public, so that everyone can see who is actively engaged in influencing EU policy-making. There have been calls to make this mandatory, i.e. if the industry representative was not on the register, they could not gain access to the EP, however many MEPs, including Sharon, believes that goes one step too far, as it does not account for those who rarely visit the parliament and for whom signing up to the register is not practical.Sharondoes support the transparency register - and she is already transparent about who she sees, including via this article!
At midday,Sharon was called on by Johanna Lybeck Lilja, Swedish State Secretary to Minister for Financial Markets, accompanied by the Swedish Permanent Representative, to discuss financial dossiers and in particular the state of play onBasle3 and the expected CRD4 on bank capital.
Sharon then attended a lunch event on CRD4, hosted by the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum. This is a talking shop between MEPs and financial industry. Each session is chaired by an MEP, there are a few short presentations from industry and often the Commission, and then a Q & A session - eating at the same time. Sharonasked several questions - to which she knew the answers but she thought the responses would help others. She reckons MEPs Wolf Klinz and Vicky Ford did much the same!
Sharon then had to get across to the adjacent EP building for a prep meeting and another trialogue on Economic Governance, which lasted for over 4 hours.
Thursday
In the morning, Sharon was called to a high level meeting, the Conference of Presidents, to meet with the leaders of the political groups (i.e. EPP, S&D, ALDE) to discuss the procedure taken on the Economic Governance package, which was now in trialogue following the epic 4+hour voting session before Easter. The Socialists and the Greens were unhappy with the speed at which the negotiations with Council and the Commission began, and have tried to stall at every phase. However,Sharonhas been absolutely scrupulous on procedure in putting the mandate and opening of negotiations on the basis of the ECON vote to the committee, and this was recognised by the Conference of Presidents. She asked that any referral to plenary for a further mandate be deferred as a tool for later use.
As soon as that was over,Sharon jumped on a Eurostar back to the UK to take part in knocking up for polling day.Sharon spent the afternoon knocking on doors, encouraging support for her colleagues and discussing the AV referendum with her constituents.
Friday
On Friday, Sharon spent half the day working on EMIR, and the other half working on Economic Governance, squeezing in time for a phone call about mortgages in between!