Mr. Mario Nava:

What we do is this. The European Commission is the body in charge of drafting legislation, so we draft legislation, particularly in the area of banking legislation. We get the legislation after having participated in the various discussions in the global forums. We then draft the legislation. The legislation that is drafted is brought to the Council and the Parliament. The Council and the Parliament have their ways of adopting legislation, but, broadly speaking, the Council works its own text and the Parliament works its own text. There are then meetings called trilogues at which the Council, Parliament and Commission try to find a common version of the text. Once the text is adopted and put in place, if it is a regulation it is directly applicable. If there is a directive, the Commission is still responsible for checking that the directives are well transposed - that is the technical word - into the national legislation. Essentially, that is our role. I would say it is a role of initiating the regulation and making sure, unless the regulation is directly applicable, that if the legislation needs transposing to the national legal systems, this transposition is correct and the Commission watches over that. Typically, one would say the Commission is the guardian of the treaty in doing that job.