Downing Street Says » European Council Meeting

The Prime Minister s Spokesman (PMS) said that we expected the European Council Meeting to be dominated by the economy, including issues that related to the G20 Summit next month.

The Prime Minister would raise a number of issues on financial sector regulation at the meeting. It was his view that the Turner review published today, provided a potential blueprint for wider reform of the global financial system. The Prime Minister would particularly talk about the commitment to extend the scope of regulation and oversight to all systemic important institutions, markets and instruments, including systemically important hedge funds, the adoption and enforcement of bi-national supervisors of internationally agreed principles, financial sector compensation and bonuses to prevent excessive risk taking, bringing credit derivative products into the global regulatory net and establishing supervisory colleges for all remaining cross-border financial firms by the summer.

One of the other important issues the Prime Minister would raise was trade; he would emphasise the need for a stronger and extended international commitment to avoid protectionist measures, underpinned by rigorous World Trade Organisation (WTO) monitoring and reporting of actions taken by countries in breach of those commitments.

The Prime Minister would also discuss what more we could do on trade finance and reforming resources for the international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

Asked if the Government was happy with the draft communiqu , the PMS said that a draft was a draft; all the issues would have to be discussed with our European partners.

Asked if the Prime Minister was worried that the strong European commitment against protectionism was backsliding, the PMS said that the Prime Minister s concern was not simply about what we might call old-fashioned trade barriers being erected, but more about the covert forms of protectionism that could arise. We would not point the finger at individual countries at this point, but we thought it was important to have more robust international systems in place for monitoring actions taken, and that monitoring should be done by the WTO.

Asked what the PMS meant by covert forms of protectionism, the PMS said that it could include for example, the way that certain industries in different countries were being subsidised, or the way that regulatory standards were being imposed by countries.

Asked if the car industry was one of the industries that was being subsidised, the PMS said that there were a number of common issues regarding the car industry that affected the European Union countries, for example we all exported a significant amount of cars to each other. However, we were not going to start pointing at specific sectors or countries at this point.

Asked if the Prime Minister felt that there were countries that had started playing dirty, the PMS said that there were risks of that happening, but we would not start pointing fingers.

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» Wednesday, March 18, 2009

European Council Meeting

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