At the same time, the ECB may apply more stringent measures than those envisaged at the national level, giving sufficient notice to the national designated authorities, which may raise objections for their consideration by the ECB. The design of the SSM’s governance arrangements was conditioned by the governance structure of the ECB, whose decision-making bodies are the Governing Council and the Executive Board, as set out in the TFEU and its Statute. With the two-fold aim of ensuring that the assumption of new supervisory competences by the ECB does not jeopardise its independence in the determination and implementation of monetary policy, and of allowing all national supervisors to participate in the ECB’s decision-making (given that prudential supervision is not the responsibility of central banks in all Member States and that national authorities are not represented in the Governing Council), the SSM Regulation established a new internal body, the Supervisory Board, responsible for planning and carrying out supervisory tasks. The Supervisory Board comprises a Chair (appointed for a non-renewable term of five years), a Vice-Chair (chosen from among the members of the ECB’s Executive Board), four ECB representatives and one representative from each national supervisor. It is currently made up of 27 members with voting rights: its Chair, its Vice-Chair,9 four ECB representatives and the representatives of the 21 NCAs of the participating Member States. In the case of Spain, the representative of the Banco de España, in its capacity as national supervisory authority, is the Deputy Governor.
Even though I am not the strongest advocate of our government bond purchases, we do not finance individual governments with them, directly or indirectly. Our aim is to maintain price stability. Thanks to our bond purchases, interest rates go down and loans become cheaper, primarily benefiting households and businesses. Besides, we have a very clear set of criteria for the timing, selection and volumes of our government bond purchases. Our parameters ensure that the private market for government bonds remains intact. One sign of the continuing relevance of this market is the divergence in the prices for German, Italian and Spanish government bonds. Another criticism is that the ECB defers problems rather than solving them. Owing to the low interest rates, cheap credit is even available to firms that are no longer competitive, and would otherwise have gone under long ago. These zombie firms tie up capital and employees, all of which is harmful to economic efficiency. We have only bought corporate bonds with high ratings. This has indeed improved financing conditions predominantly for the companies in question, but also indirectly for the firms with lower credit standing. However, banks lending to companies must take the risk involved into account in their financing conditions. So, basically, the higher the risk, the more expensive the loan. Moreover, European banking supervision requires more capital to cover the risk and looks very closely at credit standards. And indeed: not every group in the euro area can borrow for five years at less than 3% interest.