Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 01/2013

Monetary Policy and Banking Supervision: Coordination instead of separation

Thorsten Beck, Daniel Gros

December 2012

Centre for European Policy Studies

Abstract

Following the June 2012 European Council decision to place the ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’ (SSM) within the European Central Bank, the general presumption in the policy discussions has been that there should be ‘Chinese walls’ between the supervisory and monetary policy arms of the ECB. The current legislative proposal, in fact, is explicit on this account. On the contrary, however, this paper finds that there is no need to impose a strict separation between these two functions.