The Legislative Decree no. 385/1993 ("Consolidated Law on Banking"), enacted by the Italian Parliament on September 1st 1993, has undoubtedly represented a milestone in the historical transformation of banking services into a business activity, subject to prudential supervision. As it has been pointed out by many authors, the legal text resulted from that reform process has been notable for its terseness and comprehensive approach. Since then, the Consolidated Law on Banking has also been treated as a model for regulating other financial industries, such as securities and insurance sectors.
Nevertheless, the context has changed swiftly and dramatically. The recent financial and economic crisis, affecting many European countries, unveiled the weaknesses of an integration process based exclusively on minimum legal harmonisation and "soft regulation", accelerating the consolidation of a new banking supervisory architecture at the EU level, namely the Single Supervisory Mechanism.
The ambiguities, complexities and potentialities arising from this historical transition are precisely the common thread which runs through all the contributions offered at the Seminar "From the Consolidated Law on Banking to the Single Supervisory Mechanism: legislative tools and powers allocation", organised by the Bank of Italy on September 16th 2013 at its premises in Rome, on occasion of the 20th anniversary of the enactment of the Consolidated Law on Banking and on a date close to the conclusive adoption of the EU Regulation no. 1024/2013, granting the European Central Bank (ECB) with a prominent role in the supervision of the main Italian banking institutions.
We encompass herein the contributions delivered by the participant to the Seminar, that follows the studies already devoted by the Bank of Italy to the Banking Union (see Quaderno di Ricerca no. 73), by providing insights on still uncovered issues connected with the new European banking supervision framework, comprising the ECB and the national competent authorities of participating EU countries.
In particular, some of the issues raised in the debate have centered around: the EU rulemaking process and the quality of the resulting regulation, the origins and legal basis of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the possible interactions between the national and EU levels of banking supervision, the residual powers of national authorities, the evolution of supervisory tools from the Legislative Decree no. 385/1993 to the CRD (Capital Requirements Directive) IV, the management and resolution of banking crises under the Consolidated Law on Banking and in the perspective of a deeper European integration.
