The games people play
Thursday 3 May 2012
The output of this committee is normally regarded as a diqule, implemented unchanged in detail by implementing bodies, the EU normally restricting itself to processing legislative measures approved by its member states under its "guidance".
By all accounts, the EU is a powerful and influential player on the Basel Committee, so that if it is now trying to water down provisions that it, itself, had a hand in framing, suggests that there are major stresses here.
The intrigue is made all the more interesting by the fact that the chairman of the whole shebang is none other than Mervyn King, he who said he should have done more to stop the banking crisis.
One can assume that the inadequate King is less than happy with the EU's attempt to turn his golden words into law, especially as he himself is under attack from David Blanchflower, a former member of the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee, who charges King of not having done enough.
In the secretive work of banking regulation, such candour further suggests that all is not well amongst the "colleagues". One wonders how much of this is die to Sarkozy, his election prospects, and his detestation of "Anglo-Saxon" banking. And, of course, Frau Merkel's minions may have a hand in this somewhere.
But, for all the bravado and bluster of the preposterous Osborne, there is little that he can actually do if the EU goes ahead with its current plans.
Bruno Waterfield, who writes the piece, refers to the question being seen in Britain as "a national sovereignty issue", with the insistence that national regulators should be able to impose tougher requirements, on a case-by-case basis, without having to ask permission from EU regulators.
If that is what Britain wants, though, it's in the wrong business. It gave up such freedom of action when it joined the EEC, and the current predicament was well-forecast by FCO officials. Huffing and puffing about it now is not really going to impress anyone, least of all EU officials, and they are the ones that count.
If Osborne doesn't like it, he can of course make for the exit. But he has no intention of doing that, which turns his posturing into just another empty little game.
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Richard North 03/05/2012
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