International Banking Standards, Private Law and the European Union

Over the past decades, but especially since the 2008 global financial crisis, there has been a proliferation as well as an intensification of international regulatory processes regarding the activities of banks: this goes from the work of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision on prudential supervisory standards to the activities of the OECD-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on money laundering, the negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s General Agreement on Services (GATS) regarding financial services, and the more recent work of the Group of 20 (G20) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on issues as diverse as credit rating agencies and systemically important financial institutions. In all of these bodies, the European Union (EU) is involved, though often on a different institutional basis, going from full membership to observer status; some bodies count all EU Member States among their members whereas others are more limited in membership. This contribution looks into the role which the EU plays in this area of standard setting for international banking activities, in particular those norms that can broadly be characterized as ‘regulatory private law’, thereby bringing together both dimensions of ‘EU external relations law’ and ‘private law’. First of all, it is explored how the EU engages in practice within the international banking standard setting processes concerned. It then turns to the impact of international banking standards on internal EU law- and policy-making in a number of chosen areas. The paper attempts to assess the influence which the EU exercises – partly through exporting its own regulatory agenda/acquis - on international law- and policymaking in this area.