Mr Chairman, Honourable Members of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a pleasure for me to be back again in this committee for the last hearing of 2014. This year has once again been a year of profound change for the euro area and for the Union as a whole. It was a year of legislative and institutional progress on many fronts, as 2014 saw the birth of banking union with the agreement of the Single Resolution Mechanism, the start of the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the successful conclusion of the comprehensive assessment of banks’ balance sheets. And it was indeed a ... (full story)