From crisis to sustainability. The role of the banking and financial system in the economic stabilization process.

The international economic crisis of the last years is due to many factors, which are undoubtedly connected to a pervasive malfunctioning of the banking and financial system. Therefore, the financial system itself must now react - partly in a spontaneous way, partly through a legislative intervention - and provide the appropriate tools to support the economic recovery and to avoid new disruptive events. This work aims at illustrating some recent EU measures in the financial intermediation matter, adopted or planned to deal with any new crisis in the European area. In particular, we will focus on the reform of the European financial supervision and on the creation of a common framework for crisis management in the financial sector, primarily related to the cross-border intermediaries having systemic importance. In this context, we will try to identify the most relevant obstacles to the realization of the above-mentioned EU framework, considering that the creation of a new regime is crucial to strengthen the stability of the whole financial system and, finally, to restore its declining credibility.