AMCESFI is structured as a collegiate body in which the senior officials from the aforementioned institutions participate. It is entrusted with the oversight of the financial system as a whole, acting in an advisory capacity with respect to the proposed macroprudential measures put forward by the sectoral authorities. 5  The need for coordination in this field is also very necessary at the supranational level, and in particular in Europe since the creation of the Banking Union, which centralises at the European Central Bank (ECB) the supervision of the significant banks in the 21 EU countries.3 In this respect, although decisions on macroprudential instruments in Europe are in the hands of national authorities, the ECB scrutinises these national banking authorities’ proposed macroprudential policy measures to ensure that they are consistent across the euro area countries. In particular, the ECB is empowered to tighten the measures applied by national authorities to specific instruments envisaged in Community banking legislation. The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), on which the heads of the EU central banks and regulatory and supervisory authorities for banks, securities, insurance and pension funds sit, has been in place since 2011. The ESRB, whose Advisory Technical Committee it is my honour to chair, has macroprudential oversight functions and is empowered to issue opinions, warnings and recommendations on matters relating to the emergence of systemic risks, and the suitability of macroprudential measures proposed at the national level.
For example, if banks do not have sufficient solvency levels, they may not be capable of passing changes in money market interest rates through to their customers, or may pass them through excessively. In this respect, financial stability may be said to be a de facto pre-requisite for ensuring price stability. 11  Macroprudential policy can also increase an expansionary monetary policy’s room for manoeuvre if the latter is beginning to induce excessive risk-taking by certain agents or markets. In this case, the activation of macroprudential instruments, which are more selective and can affect certain agents alone, may enable the expansionary monetary policy stance to be maintained, by smothering the increases in risks in specific sectors. This is particularly important in the euro area, where monetary policy is determined at the supranational level by the ECB taking into consideration the area as a whole, whereas macroprudential policy remains under the national remit. But nor must we exclude situations in which the objectives of the two policies may clash. For example, in the expansion prior to the international financial crisis, the relatively expansionary monetary policy stance contributed to the accumulation of macrofinancial disequilibria. Had these macroprudential tools then been in place, they could have been activated to counter some of the monetary policy effects on the risks to the financial system’s stability. In short, we cannot ignore the interaction between these two policies.