FRANKFURT, April 14 - The European Central Bank has urged European lawmakers to expand its role in evaluating banks' aggregate capital requirements, calling for a single, consolidated view that includes demands set both by ECB supervisors and national authorities.
The recommendation is one of 17 the central bank submitted to the European Commission as part of a consultation intended to help EU banks better compete with international rivals. The ECB argued that a comprehensive assessment would make it easier to spot overlaps in supervisory requirements and identify areas that might be overlooked under the current framework.
In its submission the ECB proposed assigning responsibility to its Governing Council to "take a holistic view of the overall level of capital demand within and across the banking union to fulfil the need for increased coordination." The central bank specified that the review should be carried out jointly by ECB policymakers and senior supervisors, though it did not set out a mechanism for how any resulting findings would be applied in practice.
Alongside the call for broader oversight, the ECB restated several other recommendations in its package. These include reducing the number of macroprudential buffers to two, clarifying the regulatory status of convertible bonds, and widening an advantageous regulatory regime for smaller lenders.
The submission frames these measures as part of a broader effort to remove inconsistencies and strengthen the competitiveness of EU banks without prescribing particular implementation steps. The central bank's proposals emphasize coordination between the ECB's policy body and its supervisory arm but leave open the question of how changes would be enacted by national authorities or translated into binding rules.
Information available in the ECB's recommendations outlines the aims and some preferred approaches, but details on legal changes, timelines, or specific implementation pathways were not provided in the document submitted to the Commission.