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The Chairs of the three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), EBA, EIOPA and ESMA, submitted a letter today to Mr Erkki Liikanen, Chair of the Trustees of the IFRS Foundation, regarding the Foundation consultation on sustainability reporting. In their letter, the Chairs agree that improving data availability and public disclosure by corporates is a key element to foster sustainable growth, and strongly support the development of globally accepted non-financial reporting standards to facilitate the disclosure of meaningful and comparable metrics on environmental, social and governance aspects. They also support that international standards should build on existing jurisdictional and international initiatives, including those of the European Union.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) welcomed today the European Commission’s comprehensive action plan to tackle the expected rise of non-performing loans (NPLs) on banks’ balance sheets following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The action plan requests the EBA’s support to improve data quality and comparability, enhance transparency and market discipline under Pillar 3 rules, and address regulatory impediments to NPL purchases. The EBA is going to act swiftly to support these initiatives while continuing its wider regulatory and supervisory work on NPLs in the EU.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on the contractual recognition of stay powers. The technical standards provide further specification of essential elements to ensure the effectiveness of the resolution regime established by the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). These standards are part of the EBA's major programme of work to implement the BRRD and address the problem of too-big-to-fail banks.

In its 12 March statement, the EBA urged banks to follow conservative distribution policies and use capital for ensuring the continuous financing of the economy. Banks in the European Union have been able to continue supporting businesses and mostly remained with strong levels of capitalisation. However, given that the COVID-19 crisis and the uncertainty on its impact on the economy are likely to continue, with possible further deterioration of asset quality metrics over the next quarters, the EBA urges banks to refrain from distributing capital outside the banking system when deciding on dividends and other distribution policies, including share buybacks, unless extreme caution is applied.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its first Report on progress made by competent authorities with the setting up of colleges to enhance supervisory cooperation for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) purposes. The EBA’s work on monitoring colleges is part of its new role to lead, coordinate and monitor the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) in all EU Member States as set out in the EBA Regulation.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its updated ad-hoc impact study on the implementation of Basel III in the EU in response to the EU Commission’s call for advice (CfA). The study is based on a sample of 99 banks and has a reference date of December 2019. Under the full implementation of Basel III and conservative assumptions, the updated impact is meaningfully lower than previously estimated, using June 2018 data and a consistent sample.  In addition, the Report presents some qualitative reflections on the potential interactions between different elements of Basel III framework and the estimated adverse impact of the COVID-19 crisis. The EBA reaffirms its policy recommendations put forward in its previous advice and supports the full implementation of the final Basel III standards in the EU, which will contribute to the credibility of the EU banking sector and ensure a well-functioning global banking market.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today an Opinion on the amendments proposed by the European Commission as regards the EBA final draft RTS specifying the assessment methodology competent authorities are to follow when assessing the compliance of credit institutions and investment firms with the requirements to use the Internal Ratings Based (IRB) approach laid down in the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). These RTS are an important part of the EBA’ regulatory review of the IRB approach, as they harmonise the supervisory assessment methodology on the IRB approach across all Member States in the European Union (EU).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion on how to strengthen the connection between the EU legal frameworks on anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, and deposit protection. The proposals set out in the Opinion are addressed to the European Commission and aim at informing its ongoing reviews of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) and the Deposit Protection Schemes Directive (DGSD). The Opinion is also addressed to the national authorities, to implement some changes already under the current legal framework and ahead of the potential future revisions of the AMLD and DGSD.