Banks, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation

"The larger banks operating in Estonia have Scandinavian roots and their solvency among other things also depends on the good cooperation between the Nordic financial supervision and crisis resolution authorities and their banks," Kilvar Kissler, chairman of the management board of the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority, said in a press release.

"For the stability of the Estonian financial market, the Financial Supervision Authority needs to exchange information and plan and execute joint activities with its Nordic colleagues," Kissler said, adding that the given cooperation agreement is an important brick in the structure of the Nordic-Baltic financial supervision and crisis resolution.

"The agreement is a sign of the good cooperation between the Baltic and the Nordic countries, which we value highly," Marten Ross, deputy secretary general for financial policy and external relations at the Finance Ministry, said. "Joint meetings and information exchange enable to regularly receive information about possible market failures, which could endanger the financial stability of the entire region, and to respond to them quickly, if needed," he said.

Financial crisis cooperation has been agreed upon previously in the European Union with a separate directive. Among other things, it also stipulates the formation of crisis resolution colleges consisting of member state representatives for larger banking groups. The aim of the agreement in question is to additionally reaffirm the readiness for financial stability cooperation in the Nordic-Baltic region as banking is very strongly linked between the countries of the region in question.

The parties of the signed cooperation agreement include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland. The cooperation agreement between the countries was signed by Jan. 31, 2018.