mr president parliament has spent many hours in this chamber discussing how to make the european supervisory authorities responsible for our financial services into the most transparent and accountable of organisations
the result has been to establish esas which are fully scrutinised by this parliament
however in this new age of accountability after the financial crisis and in the light of the changes brought about by the lisbon treaty we need to establish comparable levels of oversight and scrutiny of existing eu institutions including the eib
given how central the role of the eib has become in financing eu member states <unk> and eu overseas activity it is now time to improve the level of accountability of its activities to this parliament
the loan book and the general banking and lending activities of the eib need to be assessed in the same way as we would assess our commercial banks
they need to be subjected to rigorous stress testing and all financial activities need to remain on the balance sheet
when leverage or risk is employed we should be sanctioning the risk limits as ultimately any default means that it is the taxpayer who will pay again
it is time for this parliament to seek a closer role in scrutinising the activities of the eib especially as the bank's role increases in developing new financial instruments
