23.10.2019  The Banking Union: a key building block of the EU project Opening remarks at roundtable “Banking Union – Five years in the making” Banco de España Margarita Delgado Deputy Governor  Dear chairs of the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the European Banking Authority, president of the European Banking Federation, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Let me start by welcoming you to Banco de España for this roundtable. Over the next couple of hours we intend to discuss both the achievements and pending elements of the Banking Union (BU) on its fifth anniversary. We are honoured to be accompanied by such distinguished panelists, so thank you for accepting our invitation and for being here today. But before getting down to the discussion, I would like to share with you a few general thoughts on the European Union project and the role the Banking Union (BU) plays as part of this collective endeavour. In my remarks today I will point out what the BU has meant in terms of greater integration for the euro area banking sector, and I will also refer briefly to those developments that, in my view, may still be missing if we are to achieve a truly integrated and cross-border banking sector. The EU project has certainly improved the life of millions of people in Europe since its creation, not only in economic terms, but also regarding rights and living standards across the whole Union.
Of course, the Banking Union is now an integral part of the Euro project. In fact, like pillars in a building, the BU provides resilience and stability to the whole Euro project. As such, the BU is in its own right one of those transformative developments that have contributed to deepening our level of integration. 2/5  However, unlike the single market or the adoption of the euro, the BU was not the result of a joint vision by EU leaders on the need to enhance banking supervision and resolution across the Eurozone. Instead, it was the outcome of bold and swift defensive reactions to preserve the single currency in the wake of the European financial and sovereign debt crisis. Indeed, it was the crisis that led to the conviction that a common and enhanced framework for banking supervision and resolution was needed to help break the link between banks and sovereigns. This conviction gave rise to the Single Supervisory and the Single Resolution Mechanisms, which, so far, are the key components of the BU. Another important development related to the Single Resolution Mechanism came to fruition last December, when the European Stability Mechanism was recognised as a common backstop to the Single Resolution Fund for both solvency and liquidity support. Today the rationale behind the creation of the SSM and the SRB seems obvious. But, to be fair, before the European sovereign crisis erupted, there had been only a few warnings against the risks that a fragmented banking supervision landscape within the Euro area involved.