A general observation for future EU threads

[Deleted]

'One size fits all' is not always a good idea. Sometimes complex problems need complex solutions, sometimes they don't, each case should be taken on its merits.

I agree that since insurers do not actually 'gamble' with money, they don't need the same stringent solvency requirements as banks, but you cant have multiple sets of regulations from differing institutions, the problem was the content of those regulations, not the regulations themselves.
And many countries opted for harder solvency requirements for everyone, including insurers after the crash, call it overcompensating if you will.

I would hardly call it trivial, if it was trivial then there would no need for it, or every nation could be net contributors. You could call it value for money, but certainly not trivial.

I say trivial, because in the budget it does not amount to much money.
It's also trivial, because the alternative is worse in terms of money anyway - The UK will lose more money by saving those 9.8 billion.

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I think countries and their citizens should talk about their local expenses before complaining about the EU, since the costsfor the EU are in comparison ridiculously low. However i agree that one size fits all sometimes creates problems where there were none.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.
The very point of the EU and the internal market is to have one rulebook.

[Kalis]

I agree that since insurers do not actually 'gamble' with money, they don't need the same stringent solvency requirements as banks, but you cant have multiple sets of regulations from differing institutions, the problem was the content of those regulations, not the regulations themselves.
And many countries opted for harder solvency requirements for everyone, including insurers after the crash, call it overcompensating if you will.

You can and should have differing regulations if those companies have different requirements.

The systems currently in place with insurers in the UK are designed to give higher priority to security over liquidity, EU regulations want more liquidity - the insurance industry is being used to prop up profits in banking and in doing so creates more risk in the insurance market.

The regulations from Solvency II seem as if they were designed by bankers for bankers, not for the benefit of other industry sectors or the general public.

If they were required in Bulgaria, or wherever, I neither know nor care, but you don't force them on an industry sector in a nation that has shown their current regulations are robust, that's just dumb and creating a simple solution to a complex problem. I read that German insurers are going to struggle to comply with the regulations, due to how risk adverse the German insurers are.

Insurers are notoriously conservative, bankers are far more into risk taking, considering that half the economic problems we have had are due to that risk taking by banks, then the more logical change would be to make banks more like insurers, not vice versa.

[Deleted]

Insurers are notoriously conservative, bankers are far more into risk taking, considering that half the economic problems we have had are due to that risk taking by banks, then the more logical change would be to make banks more like insurers, not vice versa.

yes.
Simply put, the bankers fuck up, and since insurance is quite similar to banking, at least in the leverage department, everybody got handed the spanking.
Its very stupid, but the problem is not that the EU regulates the insurance industry, it is that it did/does it badly.
I certainly don't know, but I doubt the insurance regulations are favored by anyone.

[Slant]

Once again, it is not the number of civil servants that people usually complain about, it is the bureaucracy they create.

A bureaucracy that tries to get 200 million people into the same project of running a region with equal opportunity for everyone involved. Just like the UK does, only they do it for 60 million people. Complaining about bureaucracy is all fine and dandy, but keep in mind that it's a different beast to run an island than to run an entire continent.

Took me a day to figure out what rubbed me wrong about this argument. Thanks for pointing it out and I have yet another argument to counter the idiocy that some people display.