1.4 More changes ahead

The changes discussed in section 1.2 were only the start of the thorough revision of the institutional and regulatory framework for the banking sector. In 2015, the Presidents of the Commission, European Council, Eurogroup, ECB and European Parliament published a report on Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (the 'Five Presidents' Report').1 It outlined a reform plan aiming to achieve a genuine economic, financial and fiscal Union in three stages (at the latest by 2025), inter alia, through completing the European Banking Union, launching the Capital Markets Union and strengthening the EU supervisory framework.

This section addresses the actions that are taken or are proposed further to the Five Presidents’ Report in order to give more context to the research question and to show that the topic of this dissertation is not static, but subject to continuous change. Where relevant, these actions are addressed in the remainder of this dissertation.