HARMONIZATION OF BANKING REGULATION AND SUPERVISION FRAMEWORKS
IN THE ECOWAS REGION/SUB-REGION: EXAMINING THE EUROPEAN UNION
HARMONIZATION MODEL FOR APPLICABLE LESSONS

The European Union (EU) offers a unique experience of financial integration among sovereign
countries, including regulatory and institutional integration of financial services. Financial integration
of European economies started with growing trade integration, various financial regulatory initiatives
from the late 1970s, and the scrapping of capital controls by participating European nations from the
late 1980s. While financial integration made progress, financial supervisory and regulatory institutions
remained national, with limited efforts to cooperate and share information. Even monetary unification
in 1999 was not accompanied by the establishment of supranational institutions for financial
supervision and resolution, even though there was a clear logic for it (Folkerts-Landau and Garber,
1992; Schoenmaker, 1997)