The European Parliament’s plenary is scheduled to vote next Tuesday (10 September) on whether a single supervisor should be in control of European banks, a cornerstone of the EU’s project for a banking union. But the vote on two draft regulations – one handing supervisory powers to the European Central Bank from January 2014, the other adjusting the role of the European Banking Authority – will depend on the ECB’s backing for an accountability agreement with the Parliament. The Bank’s governing council is expected to endorse the agreement at its monthly meeting today (5 September).

Mario Draghi, the ECB’s president, will address MEPs in a debate leading up to the vote. Should the ECB back the agreement, he will read out the ECB’s declaration, to be followed by a similar declaration from Martin Schulz, the Parliament’s president. Members of the economic and monetary affairs committee will hold a meeting on Monday (9 September) to assess the situation with the ECB.

The Parliament’s lead negotiators, Sven Giegold, a German Green, and Marianne Thyssen, a centre-right Belgian, reached a compromise agreement on the single supervisor with the member states in March, but the Parliament delayed endorsing it to make sure that its demands for a greater role in overseeing the ECB’s new functions would be met. Voting was further delayed to give time to the upper house of Germany’s parliament to discuss the matter, a debate which took place after the European Parliament last met, in July.

Click Here: Putters

The plenary is also expected to approve rules on insider dealing and manipulation of securities markets. The rules, in the form of a regulation, would expand the scope of a 2003 directive to cover financial instruments traded through mechanisms that were less common back then. They are also designed to ease burdens on small and medium-sized enterprises. National finance ministers backed the compromise deal on 9 July, although several delegations voiced reservations about the sanctions regime and about the prospect of administra

tive authorities gaining access to data-traffic records in the course of investigations. Negotiators from the Council of Ministers and the Parliament, led by British centre-left MEP Arlene McCarthy, agreed a compromise on the legislation in June. Negotiations on a linked directive on criminal sanctions, to streamline the existing legislation with tougher penalties, are in the preliminary stages. The sanctions issue is far more controversial than the regulation that is to be adopted next week.

The plenary will vote, also on Tuesday, on a report by Ashley Fox, a British centre-right MEP, on online gambling. The report in its initial form recommended the EU-wide licensing of online operators, but it was subsequently changed to take account of numerous amendments; it now recommends continuing regulation of online gambling by national authorities, but with increased co-operation between member states on issues of consumer protection and money laundering. Member states are encouraged to exchange blacklists of operators and to consider blocking access to illegal websites. The report is the Parliament’s response to a ‘road map’ adopted by the European Commission last October.