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With most of the post-crisis reforms fully embedded in the system, it is now time for Europe to focus on the true measure of a financial sector: its ability to finance cutting-edge jobs, stable family businesses, fast-growing innovative small businesses, research on cures for diseases, well-paying pensions, affordable mortgages, efficient solar panels, job-creating exports, and much more.
Without sacrificing safety and stability, the financial sector must be able to finance dynamic, sustainable and strong growth.
To get there, the European Banking and Capital Markets Union must work at different levels of access: local, regional and pan-European, in a seamless and fully integrated way. Companies and savers from any corner of Europe must be able to tap the Union without hurdles.
Within this vision, banks play an essential role. Banking generates prosperity and opportunities for all. Banks are a core element of corporate and household finance in Europe. For both corporates and households, what makes their relationship with their bank unique is the bank’s focus on stable customer-bank relations (relationship-oriented) rather than individual transactions (deal-oriented).
Beyond providing lending, banks also act as intermediaries, advisers and providers of both capital and risk management expertise for capital markets. Far from being mutually exclusive, ´market-based financing´ and ´banking finance´ work together to meet the needs of companies and investors. A critical ingredient of this success is the heterogeneity of the European banking sector, consisting of banks of different sizes, allowing for breadth and depth.