Europe's Banking Union as a crucial moment of structural change in economic policy.

The crisis has revealed the fragility of the monetary union and the persistence of very high financial and even political barriers between the various countries. Which, however, as evidenced by the tensions of the past few months, have not been completely overcome. The Banking Union has to be the symbol of a new-found solidity in the euro area. Of course not everything can be ended with the asset quality review and the subsequent launch of the single supervision, the coordination and the crisis resolution. The efforts to create a really resistant common banking system must continue without hesitation even beyond these steps. We can not wait for the next crisis to realize that the work has not been completed yet. The Banking Union should be a common basis to avoid mistakes and selfishness that were fatal in this crisis. The more cohesive it is the better it will be. Not understanding or at least misinterpreting the origins of the crisis was the most serious mistake. Given that the first victim of the crisis was Greece, it has become a dogma that the cause of all evils was the ease of public spending, the few controls, and indebtedness. Hence to the simplest and least effective treatment, the step was short. But if the crisis had broken out in Ireland first, what could have happened? Nothing could have been easier if so had happened, given the fragility of the banking system, emerged soon after. Then it would have been clear that the culprit was not the fiscal irresponsibility but a number of other factors, from economic imbalances to risky and hazardous loans of the banks themselves, ending with inflated real estate values. The priorities would not have been tax increases and spending cuts, but reforms that would improve the competitiveness and rapid closure of troubled banks. In this perspective, the Banking Union is essential to prevent that a new fuse of the crisis would come out of the banks. It is an ambitious project of integration, an important result although imperfect in many ways; if it represents a part of a global political response, which certainly offers scope for improvement, it’s susceptible to strong objections and legal concerns. As a complex but necessary process, the banking union should strengthen the institutional framework of the Eurozone and represent a step forward towards a real political union that goes beyond the mere objectives of economic convergence and mitigates the growing regional disparities of the Eurozone.