On July 13, 2018, the General Court of the European Union annulled decisions of the European Central Bank, refusing to allow six French banks to exclude from the calculation of the leverage ratio certain exposures connected to French savings accounts. Banque Postale, BPCE, Confédération Nationale du Crédit Mutual, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas applied to the ECB, as their direct prudential supervisor under the Single Supervisory Mechanism, for permission to exclude exposures consisting of sums in a number of savings accounts taken out with them and transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, a French public investment vehicle. National regulators and the ECB have discretion to allow banks to exclude exposures that satisfy a number of conditions from the calculation of the leverage ratio under the CRR.
When the ECB refused that permission, the six banks applied for annulment of those decisions. The General Court found that the ECB had erred in law and made manifest errors of assessment in refusing to allow the banks to exclude the exposures.
An appeal, limited to points of law only, may be brought before the Court of Justice against the decision of the General Court within two months of notification of the decision.
The Court's press release is available at: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2018-07/cp180110en.pdf.
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