Claudia Buch: 10 years later - where are we?

Introductory remarks by Prof Claudia Buch, Vice-President of the Deutsche Bundesbank, prepared for the Policy Panel at the High-level conference "EBA @ 10", virtual, 26 October 2021.

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

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of the European Banking Authority (EBA). Before getting into my own account of the past 10 years, let me congratulate the EBA leadership and staff for their great achievements: many happy returns of the day, and all the best for the coming decades!

Let's recall where we stood 10 years ago: the scars of the global financial crisis of 2007/08 were still very visible and painful. Authorities around the world were busy putting together reform packages aiming to make financial crises less likely as well as less costly. Achieving this goal is a lot harder than it might appear at first glance: economic history shows that financial crises have not only become more costly but also more frequent over time.

Ten years ago in Europe, the sovereign debt crisis had not yet fully developed. European financial markets had become much more integrated over time but lacked common supervision and an effective management of cross-border risks. It was becoming increasingly evident that European countries could not consider themselves as innocent bystanders and victims of developments and misaligned incentives in the US real estate market. Instead, many of the fault lines in the financial architecture also affected European financial markets and banks.