Research Papers

The European Union has strengthened the supranational governance of the single market in financial services over the last decade by shifting ever more powers towards the European Supervisory Agencies (ESAs). Increasingly, ESAs and their predecessors got involved in the negotiations of global regulatory rules such as the Basel II bank capital adequacy accords or the International Financial Reporting Standards. This paper traces the role of the EU bodies in these global policy regimes; it asks whether delegation of more powers on EU level translated into greater capacity of the EU to export its regulatory preferences. The key finding so far is that although internal disputes keep undermining the EU policy exports, the Commission and ESAs at least overcame their latecomer disadvantage and became important players alongside of member states.