The restructuring of financial supervision in the EU

The integration of financial markets is a fast growing phenomenon worldwide, but especially in the EU. Along with the positive aspects such as simplifying financial transactions, there are also negative implications attached to it. As was the case with the current economic and financial crisis, a problem which arose locally managed to spread to a global level at an impressive speed. After examining the US and European financial supervision models, the authors conclude that a direct supervisor of cross-border acquisitions would be a good, although somewhat unrealistic, solution. This paper puts forward arguments in favour of separating all financial supervision of individual financial institutions from that of the stability of the financial system as a whole, which would be known as European Financial Services Authority (EFSA) in the case of the EU. Keywords Economic crisis - Financial markets - Federal Reserve System - European Financial Services Authority