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.