I welcome the current initiatives, including the creation of the Simplification Group chaired by Petra Senkovic from the ECB and Edouard Fernandez-Bollo from the ACPR. Various measures are under development, like the growing use of delegation, the streamlining of SREP or JST functioning. However, an essential challenge will be to make sure that all processes will remain optimised over time and that simplification becomes a full and permanent part of decision-making, from conception to execution. To do so, simplification has to become one of the values that guide the SSM. The second priority is to promote mobility, thanks in particular to staff secondments and more on-site supervisors working on banks outside their home country. Other initiatives could include very short staff exchanges or swaps within JSTs, between the ECB and national authorities, to allow members to better understand the culture and practices of their 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  counterparts. The third and final priority is to develop synergies. Just as with the Eurosystem, the Banking Union constitutes a system with a strong center and strong national components, which ultimately have to act as one team. The goal is to make the best use of national resources by fostering their participation in all key tasks of the SSM. National authorities should not hesitate to step up their involvement in the SSM. In return, the ECB should further empower national authorities, especially in the framework of day-to-day supervision and in the field of on-site inspections in branches or subsidiaries of significant institutions.
Even where national authorities had been created, there was uncertainty over the right way to assess risks, which instruments to use and how to calibrate interventions. Moreover, there was a real risk of inaction bias since the costs of macroprudential policy are visible and are felt immediately, but the benefits accrue over time and are difficult to quantify.5 Given this somewhat tentative start for macroprudential policy in Europe, substantial progress 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  has been made over the past eight years. Macroprudential authorities now exist in all but one Member State. The gaps in our framework and knowledge have slowly been filled through research and experience. The ESRB has played an integral part in this process.6 The framework has also helped to counter the risk of inaction bias. National macroprudential authorities have mandates and legal tools to act. At the European level, the ESRB also holds a mandate to monitor risks and vulnerabilities and has a number of legal instruments at its disposal. It can, for example, issue warnings if it has identified a significant risk to financial stability, as well as recommendations setting out remedial steps to be taken on an act-or-explain basis. National authorities have certainly demonstrated their willingness to use the tools at their disposal. Most EU countries currently have at least one measure in place to address risks in the residential property sector and half have measures to tackle risks in commercial real estate.