In Portugal, committees of inquiry into banks and banking have become relatively normal. They started following the nationalization of a bank in 2008, and although the financial and sovereign debt crises are already over, the consequences and the costs of interventions on banks keeps hitting the public purse and, therefore, taxpayers.

Hence, as long as there are facts to be investigated, doubts to be clarified and bills to be paid, I believe committees of inquiry will keep happening. And they keep being useful.

First, because a lot has remained unchanged in Banking Supervision. If there was one thing that was visible in the many under analysis, it was the manner how Banco de Portugal’s performance ignored many of the fundamental causes of the disasters that would occur. The pattern of letters exchanged without consequences, of Orders that take years to materialise, postponed decisions and pure and simple idleness is clear. The sheer fact that the report commissioned by Banco de Portugal to analyse its supervisory activity has been kept secret for years, and was handed to Parliament only recently, is a sign of an institution’s inability to accept scrutiny, which is both healthy and necessary. Likewise, the reform of supervision is still being discussed but postponed forever. Ironically enough in 2017, the Minister of Finance commissioned a reform of the financial supervision model to a commission; four years later, that Minister is now the Governor of Banco de Portugal and the reform never left the paper.

Second, we need to prevent this climate of constant doubt and suspicion about the banking system or a bank in particular from enduring. Hence the fundamental need to understand the source of damages and losses, and how they were managed in the various interventions. To do this, the different management practices have to be investigated: those that started them and those who dealt with losses and credit defaults over time. We cannot pass sentences on such losses without understanding their causes. And we cannot fix bad management without engaging in an objective analysis of what went well or bad and the alternative paths that could have been followed. We need therefore to tell the losses that resulted from the economic crisis and the simple fact that companies were no longer able to repay their loans, from the losses resulting from bad risk management practices, bad management or even privileged credits that proved a disaster. In this respect, the existence of large debtors in several banks and the indisputable signs of political interference as regards some of these credits are particularly disturbing and we must ensure that they don’t happen in the future.

I would like to leave one last note. Committees of inquiry can and must have consequences. The obvious pertains to rules, legislative amendments, political decisions and public management practices. But we should also make clear in this context that Parliament and committees of inquiry are not Courts and they are not their substitutes. There are indeed other consequences – first and foremost criminal – but only justice can deal with them.