The impact of the financial crises on EU Bank Regulation: a comparative evaluation

The global system was sent reverberating through a number of unprecedented crises, the effects of which are still being experienced to date. What has caused such crisis and how did the regulatory world respond to these challenges? This thesis is an attempt at a critical analysis of how and to what extent the banking regulatory regime and the bank regulatory mentality developed subsequent to these recent experiences. With a focus on the European Union as the ultimate artefact of most changes, notably the European Banking Union, the author digs into the national regimes of individual member states, namely Malta, the UK and Italy. The aim of such a comparison is to draw out the persisting differences within the various member states which impinge on the EU’s regulatory process and in turn the countries’ response to the measures proposed by the EU. The thesis discusses, inter alia, the current european framework and the forthcoming European Banking Union with a focus on the single supervisory mechanism. In so doing it also analyses the supervisory structures at national levels, which shall have a complementary role to the ecb in supervision and further analyses the proposed draft directives on bank recovery and resolution and deposit guarantee schemes, two essential requisites for the completion of the envisaged banking union. The author also analyses the ring fencing of retail from commercial banking proposed by the USA, UK and for the EU in the Volcker’s, Vickers and Liikanen reports respectively and the general shift in regulatory mentality to include macro-prudential oversight and concludes that although much has been done, much more is yet to come.