Mr. Cyril Roux:

I listened to a few of the ... the other witnesses, and I'm struck by the fact that on ... there is this wording: "principles-based" versus "rules-based". And when people describe it, they don't describe principle-based versus rule-based, what they describe is putting the onus on the banks themselves to solve their problems, or not taking ... being sceptical and challenging the banks. And, to me, this is nothing to do with being rule-based or principle-based; it's, it's an ethos.

So, I think you can build a very challenging principle-based supervision, if you are, you know ... or you can be a book checking rule-based supervisor. The question is whether you have the skills to challenge. You, you go into ... into the meat, into the substance, so you go into the collateral evaluations and you go into the impairments and you go into the accounts and you're challenging. It's not really ... I think the moniker of principle-based or rule-based do not really describe the change in regime. And the other reason why I think it doesn't really describe this is, okay, we have CRD IV now ... and it's more detailed, but we had CRD III and CRD II before and they were quite detailed. So there are rules; there were rules as well before.