Former MFSA director appointed on Single Supervisory Mechanism

The former director-general of the Malta Financial Services Authority, André Camilleri, will serve as one of five panel members dealing with eurozone banks’ complaints about the European Central Bank’s new watchdog.

Camilleri will join names such as the former Bundesbank board Edgar Meister, who was on Germany’s central bank board up until 2007 and led the EU’s Banking Supervision Committee from 1998 to 2007, as part of the Single Supervisory Mechanism’s (SSM) administrative board of review.

The ECB takes over from national watchdogs as the eurozone’s single banking supervisor on 4 November, as part of a push for closer European financial integration to try to avert any future financial crisis, and is reviewing the bloc’s 120 largest banks.

Banks can challenge the watchdog’s decisions – the SSM – through the new board as an alternative to using the European Court of Justice.

The board’s opinions will be reviewed by the ECB watchdog’s top board and are non-binding. Nor can it suspend ECB decisions.

None of the five panel members can be part of any European institution, national supervisor or the ECB. They are: Javier Arístegui Yáñez, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain; Concetta Brescia Morra, law professor; André Camilleri, former Director General of the Malta Financial Services Authority;  Edgar Meister, former Member of the Executive Board of Germany’s Bundesbank, Attorney at Law; Jean-Paul Redouin, former First Deputy Governor of the Banque de France and Chair of the Commission Bancaire.