Perhaps the most important part of this deregulation process was the Second Banking Directive, which became effective in 1993 and which introduced the single banking license, enabling European banks to operate in any EU member state without the need for local authorisation. In fact one of the first European institutions that benefited from this regulation was the Nordic financial institution Nordea, which was established through cross-border mergers in 1997. Today, Nordea has substantial activities in four of the Nordic countries, and also constitutes a significant part of the financial system in all these countries. Measured in terms of lending, Nordea constitutes the largest bank in Finland, the second largest in Denmark, the third largest in Norway and the fourth largest bank in Sweden. The transformation of the banking sector towards a more globalised one has become apparent in the current financial crisis. We have experienced several severe financial crises also before cross-border banking became a notable feature of the financial sector, including the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990s. But this time around dealing with the crisis became even more challenging because of the banks’ presence in several jurisdictions, creating a need for cooperation between several national authorities. Why do banks become multinational? How can we explain the increase in cross-border banking, in particular in retail banking? The deregulation of previously strictly-regulated markets made crossborder banking possible.
A banking union is necessary for the smooth functioning of a monetary union for the following three reasons: •  It breaks the link between banks and sovereigns by bringing banking supervision and crisis management to the federal level. With the banking union, banks will be considered as euro area institutions over and above their nationality; it will ensure that credit conditions in the euro area will not depend on where you are but on who you are, which is what should be expected of an efficient financial market. •  It allows re-integration of the European banking system. A supra-national supervisor is in fact better placed to assess the risks of cross-border activities and therefore to protect and encourage such activities; it is not subject to national biases that can lead to the temptation of economic introversion. It is therefore more credible and strengthens stability and confidence in the area;  •  Moreover, it restores the full efficacy of monetary policy. If our monetary policy impulses are not transmitted uniformly to all of the area’s countries because of the bank-sovereign link, it undermines the very foundation of Europe’s monetary union; remember that three quarters of the financing of the euro area’s economy consists of bank loans. By breaking this link, a banking union would restore the federal dimension of monetary policy. Today the first pillar of the banking union is being constructed: the Single Supervisory Mechanism.