2009.03.0408:06:00UTC+00East European Financial Authorities Express Concern Over Negative Remarks On CEE Region

Wednesday, supervisory authorities of five East European nations released a joint statement, expressing concern over the warnings regarding the assessment of the Central and Eastern Europe region and its financial systems.

The Slovak, Czech, Romanian and Bulgarian central banks as well as Poland's financial regulator said they were concerned about the publicly announced initiatives warning about the risks to the old EU Member States' banks due to high exposures in CEE countries.

"Such initiatives imply a high reputational risk not only for supervisory authorities, but above all for the financial systems they supervise. The published information accompanying these initiatives is often simplified and misleading and could have negative implications for banks operating in these countries", the joint statement read.

They warned that such "self-fulfilling" speculation totally disregards fundamental economic developments in the CEE countries and creates misperceptions that could inevitably be detrimental to both the CEE region and Europe as a whole.

These five economies had recorded year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Authorities of these five nations pointed out that it is important first to distinguish between the EU Member States and the non-EU countries and also to clarify issues specific to particular countries or particular banking groups.

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