The central bank policy and the financial stability in European Union (EU)

Abstract

In this paper, we aim at conducting an analysis of the supervision and regulation arrangements at the level of EU27 countries. We assess the involvement of central bank in the maintenance of financial stability as well as an analysis of the financial supervision unification index and the central bank as financial authority index calculated at the level of the year 2011 (August), according to Masciandaro’s (2004) methodology. We will also analyse these indices dynamically and comparatively for the year 2004 – the year of the first wave of adherence to the European Union (EU), respectively 2008 – the first year when the present crisis was felt in the whole Europe. We observed that at the level of the European Union, there is heterogeneity regarding the types of financial supervision national systems. The degrees of concentration of supervisory and regulating power as well as the central bank degree of involvement differ from one country to another. There are four possible patterns in the interaction between the indexes. The two most frequent models are polarized: 11 countries with a high concentration of powers with low central bank involvement and 10 countries with a low concentration of powers with high central bank involvement. From the point of view of the dynamics of these indicators, we may notice in whole an increase in the degree of concentration as well as in the degree of involvement of the central bank in the financial supervision and regulation during the period of 2004 to 2008. During the period of 2004 to 2008, a significant increase of these indicators was registered for the new members, while for the old member states, this had relatively reduced changes, the averages for the two groups of countries becoming fairly equal, as a result of caching up process. During the period of 2008 to 2011, the evolution has registered a higher increase in the value of the two indicators for the old member countries, phenomenon which may be explained by the implications of the international financial crisis broken out in August 2007. We propose a change in the present EU-level financial supervisory regime as a combination of the sectoral model with the objectives-centred model, such as the following: the micro-stability (prudential regulation) could be maintained at the level of the present European supervisory authorities (ESAs), but the transparency in the market of intermediaries and customer protection, and respectively, the safeguarding and promotion of competition in the financial intermediation sector should be tackled by two other distinctive integrated agencies. Key words: Central bank, financial stability, financial supervision and regulation, the financial supervision unification (FSU) index, the central bank as financial authority (CBFA) index.