Constitutional principles and the European banking union: what's gone wrong?

This articles studies the European banking union from a constitutional law perspective. The European banking union raises several pivotal questions and shows possible points of friction with the traditional constitutional guarantees. In particular, the relationship between the banking union and the democratic principle, the rule of law, and the justiciability principle will be analyzed. Regulations establishing the new legal framework have been adopted with a different attitude of the member States concerned, and this issue poses important questions under the point of view of the democratic principle. A very important issue is the conferring of both monetary and supervisory functions to the ECB. This choice raises delicate questions about the degree of independence and the accountability of the European central bank, which are relevant if related to the democratic principle and the rule of law. Also the relationships between the ECB and the National Competent Authorities (NCAs) raise many questions under the rule of law point of observation. But it is not only the SSM which raises concerns of constitutional compatibility: also the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) could be in tension with different constitutional principles: among them, those which protect the individual freedom to hold savings.