Mr. Mario Nava:

When the currency was introduced in 1998, a committee was set up for banking supervision at the euro area level. The committee was set up at the initiation of the then board member, Mr. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa. Interestingly, the committee was chaired by the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Brian Quinn, who was also very involved in football. Once he retired from banking, he became chairman of Celtic Football Club in Glasgow which won many cups and leagues and so forth. The committee was set up in 1998 or 1999 and was tasked with examining the question of whether, together with a common currency, we should have common banking supervision.

Things take time, however, and as we say, Rome was not built in a day. I have a slide here which illustrates the key milestones. Obviously, in the initial period from 2002 to 2006 we had quite positive economic developments and clearly that meant less pressure. Not only did positive economic developments mean less pressure, however, they also hid the potential difficulties to a degree. It was only with the arrival of the crisis that we were able to see the shortcomings and deficiencies. Then, I would say that we acted quite rapidly, as fast as we could. I was very happy to read a report by the House of Lords yesterday which found that given the very difficult circumstances in which the European institutions had to act, they acted appropriately in general. The report states that the work they did was to be "admired". Clearly it takes time to pass a directive. I have explained the mechanism - the Commission drafts, the Council and Parliament adopt and so forth. To return to my slides, members will see that from 2006 onwards we have been very productive.

In response to the question of whether we could have foreseen the problems, it is more difficult to do so in good times.