“Mr Elderson is the competent supervisor we need in a post-Covid world", declared Luis Garicano

Renew Europe members at the Economic affairs committee (ECON) will vote in favour of Mr. Frank Elderson as the candidate to Vice-Chair of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the EU banking regulator that deals with day-to-day supervision of banks.

Mr. Elderson, who also serves in the ECB Executive Board, laid out his priorities and faced questions from MEPs during a hearing on Monday.

“With government guarantees for the time being keeping bad loans at bay, it is on the ECB to set the stage for a stable post-Covid world”, said Luis Garicano, Renew Europe spokesperson for economic affairs and member of the ECON committee, and added, “we are all impressed by Mr. Elderson’ credentials to fill the position and are ready to work with him to deliver on our shared priorities”.

Mr. Elderson started his intervention addressing the challenge that the so-called non-performing loans pose to financial stability. “We need to stop EU banks from accumulating bad loans as a result of COVID by using all the measures at our disposal.”, reacted Caroline Nagtegaal, member of the ECON committee, and added: " It will also help to have a common European approach to tackle bad loans in banks, and not 27 different strategies."

Ms Nagtegaal also asked the candidate about his views on incorporating climate-related risks for the banking sector, and she concluded: “Climate-related risks are a source of financial risk and it makes sense to include them in the banking supervisory framework. Regulators and democratically-elected bodies must work together to tackle this challenge”