ECB Annual Report on supervisory activities

advice in 2016 on eight occasions. For example, the Ethics Committee
recommended a six-month extension to an abstention period, previously established
for a member of the Supervisory Board, following the resignation of the member’s
spouse from a non-executive role on a board of a supervised bank. The
recommendation was given in order to exercise prudence and to mitigate any
possible perceptions of conflicts of interest. In addition, members of the Supervisory
Board and other participants in Supervisory Board meetings notified the Ethics
Committee of post-employment occupational activities in public or international
organisations and corporations outside the financial sector. These were assessed as
unproblematic by the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee also advised on the
appropriate level of compensation to be paid to a former member of the Supervisory
Board during the applicable cooling-off period.
4.5 Application of the principle of separation between
monetary policy and supervisory tasks
In the course of 2016, the principle of separation between monetary policy and
supervisory tasks mainly related to the exchange of information between different
policy areas. 45 In line with Decision <strong>ECB</strong>/2014/39 on the implementation of
separation between the monetary policy and supervision functions of the <strong>ECB</strong>, this
exchange of information was subject to a need-to-know requirement: each policy
area had to demonstrate that the information requested was necessary to achieve its
policy goals. The majority of cases did not relate to individual banks' data. Access to
confidential information was granted directly by the <strong>ECB</strong> policy function owning the
information; intervention by the Executive Board to solve possible conflicts of interest
was not necessary. Under Decision <strong>ECB</strong>/2014/39, the involvement of the Executive
Board was nonetheless required in nine instances to allow the sharing of nonanonymised
FINREP and COREP data 46 , and other raw data. Access to the data
was granted temporarily to ensure that the need-to-know requirement was fulfilled at
all relevant points in time. Separation at the decision-making level did not raise
concerns, and no intervention by the Mediation Panel was required.
45
46
Decision <strong>ECB</strong>/2014/39 also contains provisions relating to organisational aspects.
FINREP (FINancial REPorting) and COREP (COmmon REPorting) form part of the EBA’s Implementing
Technical Standards (ITS). FINREP deals with the collection of financial information from banking
institutions; it represents a standardised format of their annual accounts (balance sheet, profit and loss
and detailed annexes). COREP deals with the collection, also in a standardised format, of information
relative to the Pillar 1 calculation, i.e. details on own funds, deductions and capital requirements (credit,
market and operational risk) as well as large exposures.
<strong>ECB</strong> <strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on supervisory activities 2016 − Organisational set-up of <strong>ECB</strong> Banking
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