Given the economic benefits that result from financial integration, but also given its implications for and interaction with financial stability, it is of the utmost importance that we monitor the process of financial integration closely and understand what is happening. And this is what the ECB does.
As one of our main contributions, we invest resources, on the theoretical side, in research on all aspects of European financial integration, and we invest resources, on the empirical side, in monitoring the process of European financial integration.