1. Introduction

This chapter introduces the premise and structure of the book, which developed from three workshops organized at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The first section covers the supervision of member states’ budgets. The second section aims to explain how the new regulatory framework impacted the economic models of financial institutions and entities. The final section is forward-looking, as the European agen is full of promising challenges: better securitization and new instruments (under MIFID II), fine-tuning of supervision under delegated acts and regulatory technical standards for AIFMD, CRR-CRD IV and Solvency II will supply long-term funding in lieu of non-conventional monetary policies.