[Check against delivery]
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good afternoon,
Let me start by thanking Stefan and Carlos for the invitation to speak here.
What a pleasure it is to be here in this beautiful city.
And what a perfect choice of time and place to meet.
Let me explain.
First, the place. We are in a city that played a defining role in the history of banking—and, just as importantly, in the history of financial crises.
Florentine banking families—the Medici, the Peruzzi and the Bardi—built vast financial empires across Europe. They were true pioneers: developing early forms of international payments, advancing double-entry bookkeeping, and operating branch networks in cities such as London, Bruges, and Avignon.
One of these families, the Gondi, actually built this amazing Palazzo.
But innovation and expansion came with risks. And those same families were also among the first to experience systemic financial distress.
[In the 1340s, the Peruzzi and the Bardi extended massive loans to King Edward III of England to finance his military campaigns. When the king defaulted, the shock went through their balance sheets. Liquidity evaporated, confidence collapsed, and both houses ultimately failed—triggering a broader economic downturn in Florence.]
And here we are, almost seven centuries later, discussing how to deal with precisely the kind of crises that once brought down the very institutions that shaped modern banking.
Second, the timing. This meeting could not be timelier. The Crisis Management and Deposit Insurance package—CMDI—became law just this Monday.
As the 2022 Eurogroup statement on Banking Union made clear, CMDI is another stepping stone in the long-term project of completing the Banking Union.
With CMDI, the co-legislators have now equipped us with new tools to deal with crises—not so different in nature, if not in scale, from those that marked the end of Florentine banking dominance.
CMDI, in fact, brings a number of important novelties to our crisis framework. I will not go through all of them—as the panels later today and tomorrow will certainly discuss these in much greater detail.
Let me just mention a few that directly impact cooperation between the SRB and DGSs.
First, CMDI strengthens Article 30 of the SRMR, explicitly requiring cooperation and information exchange between the SRB and DGSs, and providing a clear legal basis for putting in place practical arrangements—such as Memoranda of Understanding—to make that cooperation effective.
Second, it introduces more concrete information-sharing obligations. In particular, resolution authorities are now expected to provide DGSs with summaries of key elements of resolution plans, so that DGSs are better prepared for crisis management.
Third, with the introduction of the DGS bridge, the framework calls for deeper and earlier exchanges—on issues such as available financial means—well before a bank reaches the point of failure.
And fourth, CMDI clarifies our respective roles and tools, reducing uncertainty and helping us act more decisively when needed.
Taken together, these changes make our framework more European while preserving the necessary national discretion and flexibility.
Now it is our responsibility to make these new rules work in practice—and to learn how to use them together.
Because, at the end of the day, preparedness is about three simple things: having the right toolkit, knowing how to use it, and ensuring seamless cooperation among all the actors involved.
For me, being here today is about taking to the next level the cooperation between the SRB and DGSs, as the co-legislators intended—always with the objective of delivering a more stable financial sector in Europe.
Today, cooperation between the SRB and DGSs is already built on a number of established practices. With many of you, we have been working together for years.
In fact, DGSs provide data on covered deposits—based on a common template—which gives us a consistent and comparable picture across the system.
But our cooperation does not stop there. Over time, we have also developed regular informal exchanges, in particular with the largest DGSs, to monitor developments throughout the year when needed. We support this work with training and guidance, and DGSs also take part in resolution colleges for banks under the SRB’s remit—contributing to coordination and information sharing in practice.
CMDI will bring us even closer together. In many ways, it will also bring many of you closer to the Single Resolution Mechanism.
This is very welcome news.
We now look forward to strengthen this relationship with you in the months and years ahead.
I am aware that there are questions about how this strengthened relationship will work in practice. Let me start addressing them. The SRM has increasingly worked on the basis of consensus. At the beginning, there were many divergent views within the SRM. But by working together, we have built trust—and, over time, we have worked out differences and reached a very deep and broad working relationship within the SRM.
Some of you will be familiar with our strategy, Vision 2028. One of its core ideas is that stakeholders should be involved early in the decision-making process. This is why our work with NRAs and the SSM has become more closely integrated at all levels.
Resolution planning, in particular, is a powerful tool to build that consensus. It offers a concrete opportunity to share methods, to work side by side, to build a common culture—and ultimately to ensure that, when a crisis comes, we are aligned and ready to act.
I hope that this phase of our new relationship will deliver similar achievements in terms of good cooperation.
On our side, we have been reflecting on how to approach this more structured relationship with DGSs. I am sure you have been doing the same. It is now time to move from reflection to discussion—and from discussion to action.
I am pretty sure this the first of many meetings in this new phase of our relationship.
Let me conclude now with a simple thought.
We need to move beyond institutional silos and approach CMDI as a truly European project. One that strengthens the Banking Union, supports the Capital Markets Union, and ultimately contributes to a more resilient and competitive European economy,
But please keep in mind that Crisis do not wait for perfect frameworks; they test the frameworks we have.
Our responsibility is to ensure that when the next crisis comes -and it will- Europe is ready. Ready with tools that work. Ready with institutions that can act. And ready with the confidence of citizens who know their savings are safe and their economy is protected.
CMDI reform is an essential step in that direction.
Let us take it together, with urgency, with ambition, and with a clear sense of purpose.
Thank you very much.
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