ESCB Legal conference 2022

Online registration opens

Welcome address and opening of the Conference

Chiara Zilioli, Director General Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panel 1 - Visualisation and legal design thinking: the steady transformation of legal practice

Society continues to evolve in its relationship to information. In the face of developments such as pervasive competition for our attention, changing ways in which citizens access information and law students are taught and learn, and digitalisation of legal transactions, there is an opportunity and a need for lawyers to understand and adopt new approaches to the practice of the law. It is a fact that visualisation and design thinking have become widely accepted approaches to help innovate, analyse, collaborate and persuade. Legal professionals may be late adopters but they have recognised the opportunity, even though more exploration is still needed. Lawyers can exploit these developments for multiple purposes: to design better legal frameworks; to deal innovatively with their clients’ most complex problems; to prepare and conduct litigation; and to share knowledge and good practices. The panel will consider the historical perspective (the law beyond words); the user’s perspective (human-centred legal design); and the client orientation perspective. The legal departments of the European Central Bank and of the national central banks and national competent authorities can benefit from exploring these new trends and perhaps find in them inspiration to make better use of the collective legal intelligence that they promote.

Chair

Hilde Hardeman, Director General, Publication Office of the European Union

Panellists:

• Filip Lulić, Legal Analyst, Legal Services, European Central Bank
• Frédéric Allemand, Manager of the RESuME project, Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, University of Luxembourg
• Marie Potel-Saville, Founder & CEO, Amurabi SAS

Discussion with questions from the audience 

Lunch break

Panel 2 - Monetary policy operations with non-banks: legal, financial and comparative aspects

The recent crisis has further highlighted the importance of non-bank intermediation and the increasing role that non-banks play in the transmission of monetary policy impulses. The panel will discuss the legal, economic and financial stability aspects of granting access for non-banks to monetary policy operations both on the asset and the liability side of the Eurosystem central banks’ balance sheets. The discussion will benefit from the experience of the New York Federal Reserve in setting up and implementing its Overnight Reverse Repo Facility (ON RRP).

Chair

György Várhelyi, Lead Legal Counsel, Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panellists

• Imène Rahmouni-Rousseau, Director General Market Operations, European Central Bank
• Kerstin Schaepersmann, Counsel, Clifford Chance
• Marco Cipriani, Head of Money and Payments Studies, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Discussion with questions from the audience 

End of Panel 2

Panel 3 - Towards legal interoperability of retail central bank digital currencies: a comparative law perspective 

In the context of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), interoperability is an important technical functionality that merits consideration from the legal perspective. The panel will discuss interoperability largely in the retail CBDC context and, based on lessons from the past, will attempt to provide conjectures about the future. The discussion will cover both the domestic context (exchangeability between CBDCs and cash; interoperability between intermediaries’ platforms) and the international context (exchangeability between CBDCs and cash; interoperability between CBDCs). The panel will also touch upon the different civil law treatment of the two CBDC systems (account based/claim and token-based/quasi in rem) as well as the ramifications of that treatment for legal interoperability.

Chair

Otto Heinz, Head of Division, Legal Services, European Central Bank 

Panellists

• Panagiotis Papapaschalis, Senior Lead Legal Counsel, Legal Services, European Central Bank
• Ross Leckow, Acting Head of BIS Innovation Hub - Strategy and Legal at Bank for International Settlements, BIS
• Jess Cheng, Senior Counsel, Federal Reserve Board
• Seraina Gruenewald, Professor European and Comparative Financial Law, Radboud University

Discussion with questions from the audience

End of day 1

Online registration opens

Welcome address – Day 2

Chiara Zilioli, Director General Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panel 4 - Comparison of the ECB’s internal review procedure for contract award decisions with the legal framework for the review of such decisions in other EU, international and national organisations

The discussion will compare the ECB’s internal review procedure for contract award decisions (i.e. the Procurement Review Body) with the legal framework for the review of such decisions in other EU, international and national organisations. It will include a stocktaking after 15 years of decisions of the PRB; an assessment of the impact of recent case law on review procedures and the requirements for obtaining interim relief from the Court of Justice of the European Union; as well as practical problems that arise, for example in terms of the language regime.

Chair

Martin Benisch, Head of Section, Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panellists

• Isabell Koepfer, Adviser, Legal Services, European Central Bank
• Jeff Dirix, Senior Advisor, Head of Group, Legal Department, Nationale Bank van Belgie / Banque Nationale de Belgique
• Laura André, Member of the Legal Service, European Commission

Discussion with questions from the audience 

Coffee break

Panel 5 - The General Data Protection Regulation and its relevance for banking supervision

Data protection is a current topic and the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU Data Protection Regulation (EUDPR) still require elucidation for banking supervisors and banking supervision. To this end, the panel will explore the obligations under the GDPR and EUDPR and how they interact with professional secrecy obligations, and will also discuss issues that have arisen in the day-to-day work of supervisors as regards the application of the data protection legislation. These include, among others, personal data access requests by managers of credit institutions, potential conflicts between such requests and professional secrecy obligations, and the handling of unauthorised disclosure of personal data.

Chair

Klaus Lackhoff, Head of Section, Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panellists

• Maarten Daman, Data Protection Officer, European Central Bank
• Sandrine Letocart, Principal Legal Counsel, Legal Services, European Central Bank
• Karolina Mojzesowicz, Deputy Head of Unit, Directorate General Justice and Consumers, European Commission

Discussion with questions from the audience

Lunch break

Panel 6 - The NCAs’ duty of assistance and the ECB’s duty of diligence when assessing AML-CFT aspects relevant for the ECB’s supervisory tasks

Article 6(3) of the SSM Regulation provides for the general responsibility of national competent authorities (NCAs) to assist the ECB in relation to the tasks conferred on it by the SSM Regulation. The assistance provided by NCAs is particularly important in the field of common procedures, especially regarding less significant credit institutions, as well as the assessment of aspects related to anti-money laundering/combatting the financing of terrorism (AML-CFT), as the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering is not within the SSM remit. The judgement of the General Court of 6 October 2021 in joined cases T-351/18 and T-584/18 (Ukrselhosprom PCF LLC and Versobank AS v European Central Bank) provides important clarifications on the division of powers between the ECB and NCAs regarding the withdrawal of authorisations for the infringement of AML-CFT requirements. The panel will discuss the scope of the ECB’s powers to assess matters related to AML-CFT requirements, as well as how the ECB ensures compliance with the duty of diligence when relying on assessments made by NCAs or competent authorities on AML-CFT related matters, and the practical difficulties that the ECB may encounter when implementing this approach.

Chair

Carmen Hernandez, Head of Section, Legal Services, European Central Bank

Panellists

• Giorgia Marafioti, Senior Legal Counsel, Legal Services, European Central Bank
• Rafael Martín Lozano, Legal Counsel, Legal Department, Banco de España
• Audrone Steiblyte, Member of Legal Service, European Commission

Discussion with questions from the audience

End of Panel 6

Concluding remarks and closing of the conference

Chiara Zilioli, Director General Legal Services, European Central Bank

End of the conference