Housing debt accounts for 83 per cent of total household debt, and that percentage has risen slightly over the decade. The story of household debt is largely a story about housing and, of course, is intimately tied up with the subject of rising house prices.
Second, improved financial regulation (as exemplified by CRD IV and by the compromise reached on the BRRD) and the gradual steps towards a true banking union (with a single supervisor, a single resolution mechanism and a harmonised framework for national deposit guarantee schemes) will importantly reduce the risk that a crisis of the magnitude that we have just experienced will materialise again.