Monetary policy and banking supervision: coordination instead of separation. CEPS Policy Brief No. 286, 12 December 2012

Introduction. Following the June 2012 European Council decision to place the ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’ (SSM) within the European Central Bank, the general presumption in the policy discussions has been that there should be ‘Chinese walls’ between the supervisory and monetary policy arms of the ECB. The current legislative proposal, in fact, is explicit on this account. On the contrary, however, this paper finds that there is no need to impose a strict separation between these two functions. The authors argue, in fact, that a strict separation of supervision and monetary policy is not even desirable during a financial crisis when the systemic stability of the financial system represents the biggest threat to a monetary policy that aims at price stability. In their view, the key problem hampering the ECB today is that it lacks detailed information on the state of health of the banking system, which is often highly confidential. Chinese walls would not solve this problem. Moreover, in light of the fact that the new, proposed Supervisory Board will be composed to a large extent of representatives of the same institutions that also dominate the Governing Council, the paper finds that it does not make sense to have Chinese walls between two boards with largely overlapping memberships. In addition, it recommends that some members of the Supervisory Boards should be “independents” in order to reduce the tendency of supervisors to unduly delay the recognition of losses.

Testing limited environmental liability against human rights requirements. IES WORKING PAPER 3/2009

Questions regarding oil spills remain high on the political agenda. Legal scholars, legislators as well as the international, European and national Courts struggle to determine key issues, such as who is to be held liable for oil spills, under which conditions and for which damage. The international regime on oil spills was meant to establish an “equilibrium” between the needs of the victims (being compensated for their harm) and the needs of the economic actors (being able to continue their activities). There is, however, a constantly increasing array of legal scholars’ work that criticizes the regime. Indeed, the victims of a recent oil spill, the Erika, have tried to escape the international regime on oil spills and to rely instead on the provisions of national criminal law or EC waste legislation. In parallel, the EC legislator has questioned the sufficiency of the international regime, as it has started preparing legislative acts of its own. One can in fact wonder whether challenging the international liability regime with the European Convention on Human Rights could prove to be a way forward, both for the EC regulators as well as the victims of oil spills. This paper claims that the right to property, as enshrined in Article P1-1 of the Human Rights Convention, could be used to challenge the limited environmental liability provisions of the international frameworks.