The results also come at an awkward time for Carlo Comporti, the Italian touted to lead ESMA’s approximately 350 members of staff from November, as he prepares to face MEPs about the job on Sept. 2. Comporti is currently a commissioner at Italy’s markets regulator CONSOB and sits on ESMA’s management board.
“Like any organisation, we recognise that there are areas where we can do better,” a spokesperson for ESMA told POLITICO, adding that such surveys aim to pinpoint areas of concern and address them. “ESMA has already launched a structured follow-up process and established dedicated focus groups on Leadership and Transparency to identify concrete improvement actions.”
ESMA’s upgrade is central to the EU legislative program, known as the Market Integration and Supervision Package, which would create a single watchdog that’s responsible for policing some of the bloc’s most important companies that underpin financial markets. The move to cede national power to a single entity has prompted pushback, especially in Dublin and Luxembourg, where most money managers in Europe operate from.
Strengths and warnings
ESMA carried out the staff survey, which boasted an overall response rate of 88 percent, with the help of accounting giant PwC and presented the results to its employees on April 15.
On the face of it, the main findings are encouraging. Staffers’ sentiment improved by three percentage points to 66 percent since the last poll in 2023. The survey described that number as “moderately strong,” but still far off the tally reached six years ago at 73 percent.
Employees’ sense of duty is robust too, with 83 percent of respondents saying that they were proud to work for the EU agency. Even 90 percent said they were willing to make an extra effort in their jobs to deliver the best results.
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