Press Release: Report on financial stability (Brouwer Report)

At the Informal Ecofin Council of 11 September 1999 in Turku, ministers and governors agreed to ask the Economic and Financial Committee to check whether the existing regulatory and supervisory structures in the EU can safeguard financial stability, particularly in the context of a rapidly changing financial environment. For this purpose, an ad hoc working group, chaired by the Dutch Deputy Governor Henk Brouwer prepared a report on financial stability under the aegis of the EFC.

The organisation of the report is as follows. Section II contains the main conclusions (assessment). The rest of the paper examines the impact of the major financial trends on the stability of the financial system in Europe (section III), as well as the arrangements in the EU aimed at safeguarding financial stability. These arrangements can be divided into two main groups: the first one covers regulations (section IV) and supervisory structures (section V), which are primarily directed at preventing financial instability. The second group of arrangements consists of various types of crisis management, such as liquidity support to individual institutions or to the market as a whole (section VI).