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President Van Rompuy said: On the Banking Union, I am glad we are making good progress. The Single Supervisory Mechanism was adopted by the legislators last week and will be up and running 12 months from now. Tonight we heard from President Draghi about the bank balance sheet assessment the European Central Bank will be overseeing between now and then. A very important exercise, for which governments must plan well in time, with coordinated and appropriate arrangements, including national backstops.
The next crucial step for the Banking Union will be the Single Resolution Mechanism. Because once supervision is European, we cannot leave failures to the national level. Member States have committed to reach a political agreement on the Commission proposal by the end of the year, so that it can be adopted before the end of the parliamentary term.
Beyond the Banking Union, we want to keep the momentum on our roadmap for the Economic and Monetary Union. Ahead of the decisions we will take at our European Council in December, we talked about how to increase the level of commitment, of ownership and of implementation of reforms for growth and jobs in the eurozone.
We also talked about the monetary union's social dimension. It's important to coordinate not just on economic policies, but on employment- and social policies too. Because when social distress looms somewhere in the Union – impacting social cohesion, fuelling populism – we are all indirectly concerned. The Council will decide on this in December, so that from next year, in the European Semester, we'll review priorities also based on employment and social indicators and on more social dialogue, both in Member States and at the level of the Union.
President Barroso said: "The ECB and EBA will have our full support in their important work on the comprehensive assessment of banks. In parallel, we need to make every effort to agree on the Single Resolution Mechanism before the European elections in May. I mean, to complete the legislative process, completing the Banking Union remains our top priority. And I was happy that Member States have agreed that they should come to a political agreement on the Single Resolution Mechanism, on the basis of the Commission proposal, before the end of this year."