The new framework is an important response to the financial crisis and it also takes us forward in fostering European financial integration, a key dimension of the Single Market. The ESRB I will have the responsibility of chairing the ESRB, which has the mandate of mitigating EU-wide systemic risk through macro-prudential oversight.
At present, we hardly need to describe systemic risk in words: we can almost feel it. In all our economies, financial distress became so widespread that it impaired the functioning of the entire system to the point where economic growth and welfare suffered massively. This financial crisis is an overwhelming case of the materialisation of systemic risk.