The single financial market is an essential structure for stimulating economic growth within the European Union. And continentwide competition between intermediaries, by producing the best investment services, will stimulate saving and optimize its allocation to the most effective investment, aiding the growth of the European economy.

 

The progress already made towards the full realization of the single market has been greater than is generally perceived, event though decisive challenges still lie ahead (see,for instance, the Green Paper on financial services).Once the accompanying regulations to the directives already in effect are finalized, the regulatory architecture in place will be highly competitive, a market structure consisting of uniform rules that will call up the competitive capacity of banks, which will be providing the same financial services to all European firms and consumers and will be vying with one another for business and customers.

 

The institution of a model that is so simple and elegant yet at the same time so effective and competitive has required the preparation of a highly complex regulatory structure embracing more than 40 measures, counting directives and other provisions. Some directives involve three levels of regulation, consultations with dozens of firms and associations, and coordination between national regulatory and supervisory authorities.

 

The Italian financial industry has not failed to contribute with its own convinced engagement to this common effort, in the awareness that so sophisticated a plan would produce an enormous competitive potential on which to count. Hence the demanding work of transforming Italian banks and associations, as wellas our operational and technological infrastructures.

 

This is a process that must go ahead. We know that the choices already made will bring a time of even sharper competition, not a future of undisturbed positional rents. But this is the path the Europe will take to emerge as a political and institutional power and a protagonist on the world economic scene.

 

The single financial market, then, is the true anchor of the European Union. It is the market that Italian banks have elected as their own and for which they have worked and will continue to work.