Financial Regulation

These new, 1-credit courses, bring in practitioners to talk with students about real-world applications of the policies and theories discussed in their academic coursework. The classes combine academic discussion with real-world insights from the instructors’ work in the industry.

The goal of this upper-level course is to transition majors and minors from academic theory to a practical application of their specialization in European affairs. Students will explore how the EU functions in the real world by examining its response to the financial crisis.

Over an extended period, the EU developed a new regulatory framework to govern an entire industry, with global reach and implications. By exploring this evolution, we will discover some of the themes, goals, challenges and criticisms of further integration. Given the nature of the industry, our analysis will extend beyond the political to encompass economic considerations as evidenced by the EU’s interaction with market participants and its key objectives of preventing financial instability while ensuring economic growth and increasing access to “suitable and appropriate” products and services for its citizens.

We will begin with a discussion of the single market supported by the four freedoms—highlighting the free movement of capital and services. We will briefly review the global financial crisis and the impact of contagion on the EU. Global events motivated the drive to establish an additional layer of centralized, technocratic administration, resulting in the transfer of supplemental powers from the member states. By identifying the steps in the legislative process and the specific roles of the relevant institutions, students will learn how the EU progresses from action plan to final rules with input from experts, trade associations, and the regulated business community. We will review the choice of implementing binding regulations instead of discretionary directives to advance a fundamental EU goal of establishing a single rulebook. The course will conclude with an overview of key concepts such as equivalence decisions designed to prevent external risks to the EU financial system and examine accusations of its selective deployment in response to Brexit.

Meet the instructor

Cheryl McGee Wallace is a lawyer and senior management consultant, specializing in cross-border financial services, with experience in London, New York and Washington, DC. In addition to a JD from the American University Washington College of Law, Cheryl also holds an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in international economics and European integration, and a BA in French and German from Howard University. Having lived in Belgium, France, and Germany, she is proficient in the respective languages, including Flemish (Dutch).