Kasia Parchimowicz presenting at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo

On Wednesday, Kasia Parchimowicz had the opportunity to present at the Seminar on Discretionary Elements of the EU Capital Requirements Framework. The event, organized by BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, brought together banking regulation experts from various EU/EEA countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Poland.

The seminar aimed to address national approaches to setting capital buffers and the challenges posed by the diversity in practices across Member States (Kasia presented Polish perspective). While the EU/EEA legal framework is designed to harmonize the level of capital banks must maintain, the event underscored that national authorities often approach capital buffers from their own unique perspectives, leading to fragmentation in administrative practices.

Under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), banks are subject to common minimum capital requirements, but additional discretion is given to national supervisors through the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). This allows authorities to impose capital add-ons and buffers tailored to specific risks.

The event sparked in-depth discussions about these discrepancies, revealing that although the legal framework aims for uniformity, practices remain fragmented. As a result, even though some overarching, systemically threatening issues are recognized, the national execution of rules can still vary greatly.

Kasia Parchimowicz expresses her gratitude to Sjur Swensen Ellingsæter for organizing such a timely and relevant seminar, and to the experts from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) for their invaluable insights during the preparatory phase.

This seminar was made possible through the Research Council of Norway’s funding of the Research group on Supervision and Enforcement of EU/EEA Economic Regulation (SupER).

Stay tuned for the post-seminar publication, which will explore these topics in more detail.