The EBA 2017 Work Programme

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published in October 2016 its detailed annual work programme for 2017, describing the specific activities and tasks of the Authority for the coming year, as well as a multiannual work programme, highlighting the key strategic areas of work in the years from 2017 to 2020.

The EBA's work for 2017-2020 was defined under seven strategic areas and 38 activities. The programme included a description of the Authority's strategic areas of activity, expected results and outputs.

It had been developed on the basis of the tasks specified in the Authority's founding Regulation as well as of the various mandates and legislative proposals received and envisaged in the area of financial and banking regulation.

In particular, in 2017-2020, the EBA would (i) continue to play a central role in developing and maintaining the Single Rulebook for banking in the EU; (ii) promote efficient and coordinated crisis management of credit institutions, investment firms and financial market infrastructures in the EU; (iii) promote convergence of supervisory methodologies and practices to a high standard so as to ensure that regulatory and supervisory rules for going concern and crisis situations are implemented consistently across the EU; (iv) identify and analyse trends, potential risks and vulnerabilities stemming from the microprudential level across borders and sectors; (v) maintaining and developing the common supervisory reporting framework, as well as acting as the EU data hub for the collection, use and dissemination of data on EU banks; (vi) protect consumers, monitor financial innovation and contribute to easy retail payments in the EU; and finally (vii) be a competent, responsible and professional organization, with effective corporate governance and efficient processes.

As to the priorities for 2017, the EBA would focus on liquidity and leverage ratio, credit risk and credit risk modelling, recovery planning and early intervention, promoting convergence, and improving the framework for the protection of consumers and the monitoring of financial innovation.

In addition, the EBA expected a considerable number of legislative reforms from the European Commission that would affect the 2017 planned work, such as the review of the CRR and the consequence of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS)'s revision of the trading book, the implementation of the total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) requirements in the EU prudential regulatory framework, the fundamental review of the trading book (FRTB), further work related to proportionality in the regulatory framework and changes to the securitisation framework in the context of the Capital Market Union (CMU).

This additional work would require a reprioritisation exercise in light of the budget and resources constraints and, therefore, a focussing on the EBA's strategic areas for its future development. With this in mind, the EBA intended to expand its ability to collect supervisory data from EU competent authorities to capture the overall of EU banking sector, which would significantly improve its analysis of the impact of regulation and enhance its transparency work.

EBA: Press Release, 12.10.16: EBA publishes work programme for 2017 https://www.eba.europa.eu/-/eba-publishes-work-programme-for-2017

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