One of my most reliable sources in Brussels warned me some time ago that banking supervision is going to be the next controversial issue in economic policy. I was a little sceptical at the time, since financial regulation tends to be a fairly technical subject somewhat removed from the public debate.

But my interlocutor’s assessment now seems fair as the European Union finds itself called upon to make decisions on the regulation of merged cross-border banks such as Unicredit/HVB or BNP Paribas/Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. Europe’s current approach to this problem is to set up a lot of committees with similar sounding names to co-ordinate national supervisors.