The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR), the body that ensures supervisory convergence between the continent’s member states, has restructured to increase efficiency and facilitate easier decision making.
The new structure is also expected to help CESR’s conversion into the European and Markets Authority (ESMA), which will give it greater authority to make binding decisions. The changeover to ESMA is expected to take place at the start of 2011.
Since the beginning of this year, CESR has streamlined its 70 working groups to nine standing committees, two technical support groups, two operational networks and three temporary groups.
The nine standing committees will each cover a specific area; there will be committees devoted to secondary markets, post-trade issues, investor protection and investment management. The secondary markets standing committee, among other things, will tackle convergent implementation of MiFID across member states.
Each will have one or more members of the CESR Secretariat, comprising senior representatives from member states. CESR’s work will continue to be conducted by holding public consultations or hearings that draw on knowledge from relevant stakeholders.
ESMA is one of three new supervisory authorities that will be created from the existing Level 2 Committees as part of the European Commission’s efforts to strengthen cross-border supervision and risk controls and prevent future financial crises.
As well as enabling a smooth switchover to ESMA, CESR said the decision to streamline its operations will enable it to achieve a higher level of convergence between member states and use the expertise of its senior members more efficiently.
“During the course of the last eight and a half years, since CESR’s creation, the Committee has gone through significant changes,” said Eddy Wymeersch, Chair of CESR and the Supervisory Board of the Belgian Commission Bancaire, Financière et des Assurances (CBFA), in a statement, noting that the emphasis of CESR’s role has shifted from providing technical advice to the Commission to achieving regulatory convergence through cooperation between European supervisors.
With the creation of ESMA, the work will further evolve with the objective being to develop a common European supervisory rulebook,” continued Wymeersch. “We therefore think that the time has come to rationalise and re-organise ourselves in order to use resources more efficiently by creating renewed focus on the tasks at hand. Crucially, CESR’s new structure mirrors the functioning of the markets rather than reflecting the legislation underpinning the area.”