On 7 May 2019, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published a letter it sent to the Director General for Financial Stability at the Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (FISMA), dated 5 March 2019, regarding the European Commission’s call for advice (CFA) for the purposes of a benchmarking of national loan enforcement frameworks (including insolvency frameworks) from a bank creditor perspective it issued in January 2019 (our blog is here).
The CFA asked the EBA to conduct an ad hoc data collection and analysis covering all EU Member States and the following asset classes: consumer credit, residential and commercial real estate, SMEs and intermediate size firms. The CFA provided a timeline for this exercise:
- 30 April 2019: EBA to propose a sample of banks for review by Commission services;
- 30 June 2019: EBA to deliver preliminary analysis of the data gathered; and
- 31 December 2019: EBA to deliver the final analysis and report.
In its letter, the EBA raises concerns about the timing of the project. Specifically, the EBA Board of Supervisors have concluded that such a data collection project would not be feasible in the timeframe given. The EBA wishes to continue the project but has proposed an alternative schedule:
(i) collection and a preliminary analysis of the data by December 2019; and
(ii) the delivery of the complete analysis and report by July 2020.
Under this revised timeline the EBA would continue the preparatory tasks and technical discussions regarding the representative sample of banks and the data collection templates, to be submitted for review by the EBA Board of Supervisors before June 2019. Accordingly, the EBA requests the Commission to amend the timeline of the Call for Advice to better suit the proposed data collection and analysis.
