The Interplay of Macro-Prudential Regulation and Microeconomic Financial Regulation in the European Union in 2011–2014

Though macro-prudential policy is usually aimed at mitigating financial instability, in the European Union it mainly consisted of a discretionary use of old policy tools, such as micro prudential measures, which might have worsened an ongoing financial crisis. Two episodes will be examined: the 2011 special recapitalization of banks and the 2014 Asset Quality Review and stress tests. The metric for the EBA 2011 recapitalization was the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. In this exercise, unlike Basel II and III prescriptions, all government bonds had to be accounted for at their current valuation. This feature has not yet been included in any piece of EU legislation and was therefore highly discretionary. Given the falling prices of some European countries’ government bonds, peripheral countries’ banks were in need of more capital. Therefore, they may have reduced credit, especially to SME, or worsened credit conditions. The 2014 stress tests examined the solvency of banks with the same metric and parameters taken from a macroeconomic scenario that was a remake of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This contrasted with the macroeconomic reality of the time in which a restrictive fiscal policy was affecting firms’ cash flows and hitting, in particular, peripheral countries.