Changing Banking Supervision in the Eurozone: the ECB as a Policy Entrepreneur. Bruges Political Research Paper No. 38, December 2014

In 2012, the European Union adopted a transformational change to its banking policy for the Eurozone. It dropped the model of decentralized supervision and regulatory competition between countries, and replaced it with a single supervisor and harmonization. Transferring banking supervision to the ECB also alters the existing constitutional order. The policy process leading to this transformational change was rapid and highly political, which was different compared to earlier incremental changes to banking policy. Kingdon's model, whereby policy entrepreneurs seize opportunities at times when the independent streams of solutions, problems and politics converge, partly explains this transformation. The study of EU banking policy suggests, however, that the multiple streams framework should pay more attention to the way in which entrepreneurs engineer fluctuations within the streams and thereby contribute to creating opportunities for change. This paper identifies the ECB as an effective entrepreneur which also played an active role in political bargaining.

Keep capital markets union simple. ECMI Commentary No. 38/July 2015

A few additional initiatives will need to be taken before a European capital markets union is able to unleash its full potential. The main problem is fragmentation, arising from the deep differences existing from one country to another in the structure of markets, user preferences and the availability of well organised, long-term saving schemes. Several attempts have been made to address these barriers, but with limited or uneven success so far