Dr. Cyril Roux:

I would like to add a comment. Ms Sylvia Cronin is a member of the board of supervisors at the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, EIOPA, representing Ireland. There we work together on finishing the single rule book, issuing technical standards, working on supervisory convergence and designing stress tests. The Senator's question points to something more practical about the actual supervision of individual firms. There are two elements. There are the supervisory colleges. When we supervise, say, AXA Insurance or Allianz, we are the supervisor of AXA in Ireland and there is a supervisor of AXA in Italy. The head of the group is in France, so the French supervisor brings together the supervisor of AXA in Ireland and our colleagues in Italy in the same room in Paris in France to discuss the issues we see, the problems we face and the risks these companies are taking on. We have a supervisory college where we discuss individual groups, such as AXA or another other group. The AXA college meets every quarter, I think, and there are teleconferences, so the process is very live.

In banking we have a single supervisor in the eurozone and everything that takes place is decided by the European Central Bank. In insurance, we do not have a single supervisor but we have a system by which the group supervisor takes the helm and drives the supervision of these groups. I will complete the answer by referring to something that is even more relevant. It relates to those firms that are not part of the group and are foreign firms such as Setanta and Zenith Enterprises. We have been extraordinarily proactive here. We have gone way beyond the polite practice of supervision and have written to our colleagues. We have gone to see them and have put on the table the issues we believe they should be aware of and upon which they should act. We have put their responsibilities squarely in front of them.