Claudiu Năsui: "Exposure to investment risk must remain at the discretion of the saver"

Although he agrees with the initiative announced by the European Commission, MP Claudiu Năsui (USR), member of the Budget, Finance and Banking Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, argues that legislative simplification at European level would first be needed.

Claudiu Năsui told us: "The devil is in the details. Obviously, the principle is good: we want to help Europeans get a better return on their savings and, at the same time, be able to use that money for investments, that is, to have a more judicious allocation of resources. The problem is that the main reason why we don't have this judicious allocation of resources now is that in the European Union there is actually no Capital Markets Union. There is not even a Banking Union like there is in the US. If we want to pool all the resources, we should create these unions that I have been talking about for a long time, that Mario Draghi also talked about, and we should give up on European overburden. If we want to have a strong army, we must also have a strong economy. At the level of desiderata and objectives, what was said about the Union of the Economy and Investments is very good, but let's see how they want to do it. Because if they want to do it through more regulations, they will not succeed; there will just be more regulations in this area. If they want to do it by unifying, amending the legislation on capital markets to make it very easy for Romanian citizens to invest in Portugal, for the Portuguese in Ireland and for the Irish in Romania, and so on, then we have a chance".

Regarding the impact of the future union on the banking system in our country, Mr. Năsui stated that the banking system is over-regulated and cannot offer much better returns given the conditions it must respect regarding the safety of the money that citizens have in bank deposits.

Claudiu Năsui added: "If you want a higher return, you have to take some risks. The choice to invest is an exposure to risk. I agree that people should take whatever risk they want, because the better return comes from exposure to risk. You can't have zero risk and high returns except in the case of pyramid schemes like Caritas used to be, which promise this kind of aberrations. The return comes with the exposure to risk, but this exposure to investment risk must remain at the discretion of the consumer, the saver, and the state - in this case the European Union - should provide them with the most permissive legislation possible, so that they can invest as easily as possible. Let's first create a Capital Markets Union, and the capital will go to the areas where it gets the best return. We have a lot of money in Europe, a lot of capital, a population of almost 500 million people, but the officials in Brussels must take into account that the 10 trillion euros in bank deposits have been invested further away from the banks. That money doesn't stay there, it has a low return because the banks finance it through bank loans. I would say that the EU should not substitute itself for consumer choice, because everyone has a different risk profile; if they are at the beginning of their lives they may be more willing to take risks than someone who has just retired and needs money for their retirement".