Valeria Sannucci: Fixing and completing the European Economic and Monetary Union - the costs of the unfinished Banking Union

Remarks by Ms Valeria Sannucci, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the Rome Investment Forum 2016, Rome, 16 December 2016.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Over the last few years, Europe has undertaken numerous reforms in different areas, from fiscal to banking and financial stability, in what has been an ambitious response to the urgent need to resolve the problems that followed the outbreak of the global financial and sovereign debt crises. Several initiatives have been taken to strengthen European banks: from the definition and application of common rules, to the consolidation of truly European authorities. The Banking Union is a vital element of this strengthening process.

The Single Supervisory Mechanism, which was completed in an extraordinarily short period of time, entails very extensive and deep integration of national authorities. While the Monetary Union mostly consisted in the sharing of decision making, the SSM envisages the integration of daily operational processes to be carried out at national and centralized level.