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20 December 2019

Joint position paper from the ESA stakeholder groups on the ESA review


In this Joint Position Paper, the Banking Stakeholder Group, the Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group, the Occupational Pension Schemes Stakeholder Group and the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group share their opinion on the upcoming change of the composition of the stakeholder groups.

The four stakeholder groups:

- Regret the reduction of the number of academics, from at least 5 to exactly 4.

- Stress the need for a balanced representation of the industry-side and users-side in all four stakeholder groups.

- Regret the fact that such important changes have been decided upon without prior consultation - even though not legally required - of the stakeholder groups.

- Regret the lack of a transition period to implement the new Regulation, which should enter into force on 1st January 2020.

The stakeholder groups stress that the role of academics is very important for different reasons. First, they are able to provide expertise and background on the exact scope and content of the quickly changing regulatory framework, in a neutral and forward-looking way. Second, and probably even more important, the academics in the Stakeholder Groups typically take up the role of mediators. Their expertise and skills in drafting nuanced texts indeed facilitates the redaction of common positions. It should be noted that both the Banking Stakeholder Group and the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group currently operate with a higher number of academics than the minimum required by the Regulations. While the Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group counts 6 academics among its members, the current Banking Stakeholder Group currently operates with 9 top ranking academics among its members. This clearly shows how highly valued the role and input of academics is in the Stakeholder Groups.

The way the numbers of representatives of the different stakeholders in the SGs have been fixed, could in the IRSG and the OPSG result in an imbalance in industry representatives on the one hand, and user representatives on the other hand. The reason is that the number of IORPs (in the OPSG) and of insurance and reinsurance undertakings and insurance intermediaries (in the IRSG) has been increased to 13, while ‘professional associations’ are in the provisions relating to the IRSG and the OPSG explicitly mentioned as part of the 13 non-industry representatives. It should be noted that in the provisions relating to the other stakeholder groups (BSG and SMSG) ‘professional associations’ are not explicitly mentioned, but are typically considered part of the industry-side representatives and have indeed in all Stakeholder Groups enriched the debates with their specific expertise. While the old texts – which fixed the number of IORPs (in the OPSG) and of insurance and reinsurance undertakings and insurance intermediaries (in the IRSG) at 10, still left sufficient flexibility to EIOPA to allow a balanced representation in these two stakeholder groups, the new texts make this much more difficult. An imbalanced representation of industry and users representatives in the stakeholder groups would go against the goal of providing the ESAs with a strengthened consumer protection mandate. Therefore, the four SG regret the strict fixation of numbers of representatives in the revised provisions on the composition of the stakeholder groups, because it will give insufficient flexibility to EIOPA to provide for a balanced representation of industry representatives (through IORPs and professional associations) and non-industry representatives.

Full paper



© ESMA


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