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Back in 2015, a senior executive of the BNP Paribas group was appointed Governor of the French Central Bank. Now Jose Manuel Campa, the top Banco Santander lobbyist, is to be nominated as the new Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA), following decisions of the EBA Board of Supervisors and of the ECON Committee of the European Parliament.
As the revolving doors between the EU Institutions and the Financial Industry continue unabated, Guillaume Prache, Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, observed that “EU policy makers seem to have a short memory: Following the 2008 financial crisis, the then EC president (today working for Goldman Sachs) publicly stressed the necessity to rebalance the influence of the financial industry compared to that of EU citizens as financial users in EU policy making. Today they have forgotten the crisis and the gigantic cost to EU citizens of the bank failures.”
At the same time, the EU Council opposes all improvements that would ensure better user protection as proposed by the EC and the EP with regard to the reform of the European financial supervision system.
Not exactly the most convincing moves for EU institutions that need to regain the trust of EU citizens just before the next European parliamentary elections.
In this light, it is all the more important that yesterday at least the EBA “Stakeholder Group” chose to designate an independent academic as its own chair instead of a banker.
