Not everyone believed that European banking supervision would actually work. Four years later, this has changed. European banking supervision has been set up, it is running smoothly, and it contributes to making banks safer and sounder. But it was quite some job, I can tell you.
I remember the early days, when we were just a handful of people sitting in a half-deserted building in Frankfurt. I remember how we began to hire staff – around 1,000 – for the ECB, and how we began to bring together the supervisors in national authorities, supporting them in adopting the new European supervisory approach.