The European Banking Authority (EBA) has announced a significant series of measures aimed at simplifying supervisory data reporting and reducing the regulatory burden for European Union banks. The initiative, revealed on Friday, also opened a public consultation on its implementation. The EBA is an independent EU body dedicated to ensuring sound, effective, and consistent prudential regulation and supervision across the European banking sector. Its primary goal is to maintain financial stability within the EU and safeguard the integrity, efficiency, and orderly functioning of the banking system.
The proposed revisions will significantly cut data points in the EU’s harmonised reporting system by about 50 per cent, enhancing proportionality, especially for small and non-complex institutions. The EBA ensures these changes balance burden reduction with necessary supervisory information. These follow calls from France and Germany for a “financial services simplification package” from the European Commission.
The package addresses uncoordinated national and ad hoc reporting requests that often compound EU-level requirements, as existing coordination initiatives do not fully cover all member states. It includes an overview of national supervisory data collection and simplification efforts.
The reforms will integrate EU-wide stress test and supervisory benchmarking data into regular reporting, to reduce overlaps, increase consistency, and simplify processes. A public consultation on revised implementing technical standards for supervisory reporting is open until 10 July 2026. Proposed changes apply from September 2027, with EBA facilitating transition through stakeholder engagement. This aligns with recent European Central Bank efforts to simplify approvals for banks’ internal credit risk models.
