Severe recessions and financial crises are frequent. Their effect on the economy is persistent and often exceeds initial projections. They can also be a strong driver of widening inequality. Therefore it is important that measures be taken to minimise the risk of such events while strengthening...

The banking crisis in the euro area, which started in mid-2007 and has yet to be fully resolved, has sparked considerable debate and reform, most notably the initiation of banking union starting in mid-2012. But one issue that has been largely overlooked in the debate is the peculiar ownership...

The combination of banking union and Brexit justifies a reform of the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in the near term, in line with the subsidiarity principle. The other EU-level financial authorities, namely the European Insurance and...

The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) of 2014, together with the initiation of banking union in the euro area, represent a regime change in EU banking sector policy. The BRRD replaces the prior assumption of public reimbursement of a failing bank's claimants (or bail-out) with one of...

The depiction of the euro area/European Union (EU) as a "fourfold union" (financial union, fiscal union, economic union, political union) emerged in the first half of 2012 at the height of the euro-area crisis. It was primarily shaped by the recognition of the bank-sovereign vicious circle and...

The euro-area crisis, which nearly destroyed Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 2011-12, was a result of perverse incentives and inadequate institutions. The perverse incentives included excessive implicit national guarantees of domestic banks, and a lack of clarity on what would...

The European Union's financial supervisory architecture is based on a sectoral model with separate authorities for banking, insurance and securities and markets. New developments in the EU financial sector make this sectoral structure increasingly out of date: •Brexit creates a need for...

European Union countries offer a unique experience of financial regulatory and supervisory integration, complementing various other European integration efforts following the second world war. Financial regulatory and supervisory integration was a very slow process before 2008, despite...