Professor Haentjens on 'Proportionality in European Banking Regulation'
On 13 February, Professor Matthias Haentjens spoke at the conference “Proportionality in European Banking Regulation” at the Bank of Greece. This conference was organized by the Greek central bank, in cooperation with the University of Piraeus and the European Banking Institute (EBI).
Which Proportionality? Judicial review of proportionality in a changing Banking Union
His lecture was entitled “Which Proportionality? Judicial review of proportionality in a changing Banking Union”. It concerned, specifically, how courts in the Banking Union treat challenges to supervisory decisions on the ground of (a violation of) the proportionality principle. Professor Haentjens showed how difficult it is to establish at which level of the European judiciary a proportionality challenge must be lodged, and how regulators do not always apply a full proportionality assessment as they should. Moreover, he argued that the more proportionality has been codified, the closer scrutiny the judiciary may apply when testing whether the proportionality principle has been met. This will, for instance, also be a consequence of the Reform Package of CRD IV and CRR which the European Commission published in November 2016.
The EBI is an international centre for banking studies resulting from the joint venture of the mostly regarded European academic institutions which have decided to share and coordinate their commitments and structure their research activities in order to provide the highest quality legal, economic and accounting studies in the field of banking regulation, banking supervision and banking resolution in Europe. Leiden University is one of its earliest member institutions.