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In particular, he stresses that the relevant measures of success should be based on the progress made to deliver a more integrated market for banking services and to remove the remaining links between domestic fiscal conditions and the perceived soundness of banks and the value of their liabilities.
Those two conditions are but concrete aspects of the main leitmotif of the European integration project, namely the elimination of the economic significance of national borders within Europe. Having introduced a single currency, Europe also needs to make currency-like instruments – such as bank deposits – as location-independent as possible.
He argues that those objectives require the adoption of a number of additional reforms ranging from further harmonisation of regulation to the creation of a common insolvency regime for banks. These include the development of the remaining elements of the banking union project, an effective response to the implementation challenges of the new resolution framework, and the removal of structural obstacles to market integration associated with the organisation of the banking industry.
Of course, this is an overly ambitious agenda and by no means implies minimising the great progress made so far in developing the banking union. Yet that agenda reflects a key feature of the European integration project which has recurrently manifested itself over the years: the only way to preserve the achievements of the past is to keep pursuing increasingly ambitious objectives in the future.