Fostering Centralization of EU Banking Supervision Through Case-Law. The European Court of Justice and the Role of the European Central Bank

Abstract

After almost five years from its entry into force, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (“SSM”) established by Regulation 1024/2013 of 15 October 2013, in force since November 4, 2014 (“SSM Regulation”) truly stands out as one of the most interesting achievements of recent EU legislation. Introduced right afterwards the financial crisis together with its twin mechanism for banking crisis management (the Single Resolution Mechanism), it provides a peculiar model of centralization and cooperation amidst European and national institutions in the field of banking supervision within the Euro area. Since its birth, the SSM has received wide attention from scholars and practitioners, raising an overriding amount of discussions and debates. As much as the SSM becomes mature, the underlying legal structure becomes clearer, and recent jurisprudence shows that it may well be referred to as a highly experimental field of EU Legislation . Indeed, also considering traditional topics such as the allocation of powers between Member States and EU institutions, or the relationship between EU law and national one, the SSM is providing new insights, that might also provide for fruitful developments at a broader level of EU Law. In this context, the role of the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) is becoming paramount, as may be gathered by considering the approach taken in some recent cases that have come to its attention. In this paper, the intention is to focus on three landmark decisions, so as to show how the ECJ is fostering the development of the SSM towards an increasing level of centralization of banking supervision in the hands of the European Central Bank (“ECB”): the so-called “Landeskreditbank” case (May 2017); the “Berlusconi” case (December 2018), and the “Credit Agricole” case (April 2018).