By Viktoria Dendrinou And Stephen Fidler 

BRUSSELS--The European Union's new financial markets chief said there is no need for the U.S. to stress-test European banks that have already received health checks in Europe

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of his first trip to the U.S. in his new role, European financial services commissioner Jonathan Hill said that banks across the bloc are "properly and sensibly capitalized" and there is no need for stress-testing banks on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Having a double requirement isn't necessary," he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that two large European banks, Deutsche Bank AG and Banco Santander SA, are likely to fail the Federal Reserve's stress test over shortcomings in how they measure and predict potential losses and risks, citing people familiar with the matter.

Both Deutsche Bank and Santander passed European Central Bank stress tests in October. Those tests focused on whether the banks had enough capital to withstand a two-year recession but didn't assess issues addressed by the Fed's test, including how the banks are governed, risk management and other more qualitative factors.

The Fed started monitoring European banks closely after it was forced to come to the aid of some major U.S. banks during the 2008 crash. Mr. Hill emphasized that European lenders are in much better shape now than they were during the crisis, having gone through rigorous stress tests earlier in the year.

"The stress test and comprehensive assessment process we went through in the EU actually shows that EU banks are in much [better] health than before, are strongly capitalized and have emerged from the crisis in much better state," he said.

During his four months in the role, several banking scandals have come to light, despite the influx of regulations over the past few years aimed at curbing risk-taking and preventing illegal behavior.

Mr. Hill also said he was disappointed to read reports of allegations that HSBC may have helped clients avoid taxes via its Swiss unit.

"I don't think it is healthy that the financial-services industry is seen as being divorced from the rest of the economy and they've got a kind of pariah status," he said. But, he added, "there's a reason why that keeps happening."

Mr. Hill said prescriptive regulation has led firms to hire lawyers, compliance officers and others so as to "wiggle their way into the cracks of the regulatory system." This can weaken bankers' sense of responsibility.

"So you get into a downward spiral of...'Have you complied?' and you don't actually ask yourself what is the right behavior that you ought to have," he said.

On the other hand, he was skeptical that an approach solely aimed at changing bankers' values "is going to cut the mustard."

Mr. Hill inherited a number of disagreements between EU and U.S. regulators. He indicated that progress has been made to tackle an impasse between EU and U.S. regulators in their efforts to coordinate on international rules for derivatives.

He said that he hoped the issue would be resolved ahead of a deadline in June. At that time, under EU rules, high capital charges would come into effect for European banks that do business with U.S. clearinghouses, rules meant to reduce risks in the financial system by standing between buyers and sellers of securities and derivatives.

So far, the EU has been unwilling to bless U.S. clearinghouse regulations as being strict enough to be deemed equivalent to European rules, as they've done with rules in Japan, Hong Kong, India and other countries with much smaller clearinghouses.

The deadline has already been pushed forward twice, by six months each time.

"We've been working closely and I think generally we've been making some progress. Good progress," Mr. Hill said, adding that his instinct was to say "let's sort this out" to his team in the EU and to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Timothy Massad.

"I know there will be difficult issues between us and things no doubt over the years on which we don't agree. But my starting point is we agree on a hell of a lot and the more we can agree, and not get bogged down in kind of trench warfare over issues, the better it will be for financial services industries on both sides of the Atlantic," he said.

Write to Viktoria Dendrinou at viktoria.dendrinou@wsj.com and Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com

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