And I cannot neglect to mention a third ray of hope for Europe: we have recently implemented major reforms. By that, I am referring to the EU’s banking union. The banking union was approved in May 2014 and has standardised banking and financial supervision in the euro area.
Though still in its infancy, it is one of the most sweeping reforms to be implemented following the euro-area crisis. In the euro area, we were able to see that the costs of the crisis were felt not only by the countries that caused them.