The question of financial regulation within the European Union has acquired over recent months a new salience and urgency.

As a result of the near-collapse in 2008 of the European banking system, the next twelve months are likely to see important steps by the European Union towards more integrated and mutually constraining forms of financial regulation within the Union.

Over the fifty years of its existence, the Union’s major integrative steps have usually been accomplished in pragmatic response to external events or internal crisis.

The manifest severity of the current economic and financial crisis has finally engendered, at a later date than might have been expected, serious debate about the desirability of integrated European regulation for integrated European financial markets.

Given the central role played by British banks in the destabilization of the European financial system over the past two years, this topic should be one of particular interest to British audiences.

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