New obstacles to the European banking union have emerged over the last year, but a successful transition remains both necessary and possible. The key next step will be in the second half of 2014, when the European Central Bank (ECB) will gain supervisory authority over most of Europe's banking...

Five years after the first tremors in Europe's banking system, what makes the crisis unique is the absence of a democratically accountable decision-making framework; there is an 'executive deficit' that compounds Europe's democratic deficit. The author argues that the only way to resolve the...

The new European Commission has signalled that it will work to create a 'capital markets union'. This is understood as an agenda to expand the non-bank part of Europe's financial system, which is currently underdeveloped. The aim in the short term is to unlock credit provision as banks are...

The banking crisis in the euro area, which started in mid-2007 and has yet to be fully resolved, has sparked considerable debate and reform, most notably the initiation of banking union starting in mid-2012. But one issue that has been largely overlooked in the debate is the peculiar ownership...

The depiction of the euro area/European Union (EU) as a "fourfold union" (financial union, fiscal union, economic union, political union) emerged in the first half of 2012 at the height of the euro-area crisis. It was primarily shaped by the recognition of the bank-sovereign vicious circle and...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) played a ground-breaking role in understanding the financial-sector dynamics of the euro-area crisis. It was the first public authority, and one of the first more generally, to acknowledge the role of the bank-sovereign vicious circle as the central driver...

The European Union's banking union project started in mid-2012 in response to the euro-area crisis, with the goal of breaking the bank-sovereign vicious circle. The objective was also to restore private liability in banking and to move towards an integrated supranational market for banking...

Credit ratings have a huge impact on the access to and costs of funding, regardless whether the rated entity is a private enterprise or a sovereign borrower. Since the beginning of the financial crisis there has been a vivid and controversial debate about methods, timing and procedures used by...