On 12 February 2024, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published a follow up to its 2021 peer review report on the joint European Supervisory Authorities’ (ESAs) guidelines on the prudential assessment of the acquisition of qualifying holdings.

The joint ESAs guidelines define common procedures based on the assessment criteria laid down in the EU legislative framework that establishes how acquisitions and increases of qualifying holdings by natural or legal persons in financial institutions should be assessed. They also further develop the assessment process defined in the EU legislative framework and aim to harmonise supervisory practices in the financial sector across the EU to provide more clarity to proposed acquirers on how they should notify Member State competent authorities (NCAs).

The follow up report assesses the adequacy and effectiveness of the actions undertaken by NCAssubject to the 2021 review. It has identified strong progress in remedying the deficiencies that were identified.  For instance, all NCAs have overall taken the need to respond to the assessment of the initial peer review seriously and most have adopted measures to remedy the deficiencies identified. This is reflected in the scoring of 16 NCAs being upgraded from ‘largely applied’ or ‘partially applied’ to ‘fully applied’ and 4 NCAs being upgraded from ‘not applied’ or ‘partially applied’ to ‘largely applied’.