Beyond Wirecard

Financial supervisory authorities in the EU are not sufficiently independent of political and economic influence. As the financial scandal surrounding Wirecard shows, this risks creating conflicts of interest that undermine the integrity of the European financial system and harm the goal of an integrated banking and capital markets union. This Policy Brief therefore proposes Europeanwide requirements for the independence, accountability and transparency of national financial regulators. Ten years after the establishment of the European System of Financial Supervision, it is high time to regulate the governance of national supervisory authorities across Europe and thereby strengthen financial supervision throughout the EU.