Promoting European banking integration with capital requirements?

Abstract

An integrated European banking market can be seen as an ultimate objective of the Europe’s banking union project. This would help disentangle supply of credit in a certain country from the state of public finances of that country. The recent initiative to reduce home bias in banks’ sovereign debt exposures aims to support these goals. By a similar logic, should bank lending be steered towards more cross-border diversification within the banking union? This could be encouraged within the current system of banks’ capital requirements.