Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 928

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 928
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, there can be no assurance that the application of the existing regulatory requirements, standards or recommendations will not require us to issue additional securities that qualify as own funds or eligible liabilities, to maintain a greater proportion of its assets in highly-liquid but lower-yielding financial instruments, to liquidate assets, to curtail business or to take any other actions, any of which may have a material adverse effect on the Group's business, results of operations and/or financial position.

EU fiscal and banking union

The project of achieving a European banking union was launched in the summer of 2012. Its main goal is to resume progress towards the European single market for financial services by restoring confidence in the European banking sector and ensuring the proper functioning of monetary policy in the eurozone.

The banking union is expected to be achieved through new harmonized banking rules (the single rulebook) and a new institutional framework with stronger systems for both banking supervision and resolution that will be managed at the European level. Its two main pillars are the SSM and the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM).

The SSM (comprised by both the ECB and the national competent authorities) is designed to assist in making the banking sector more transparent, unified and safer. In accordance with the SSM Regulation, the ECB fully assumed its new supervisory responsibilities within the SSM, in particular direct supervision of the largest European banks (including us), on 4 November 2014.

The SSM represented a significant change in the approach to bank supervision at a European and global level, and resulted in the direct supervision by the ECB of the largest financial institutions, including us, and indirect supervision of around 3,500 financial institutions and is now one of the largest in the world in terms of assets under supervision. In the coming years, the SSM is expected to continue working on the establishment of a new supervisory culture importing best practices from the 19 national competent authorities that are part of the SSM and promoting a level playing field across participating EU member

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states. Several steps have already been taken in this regard such as the publication of the Supervisory Guidelines; the approval of the Regulation (EU) No 468/2014 of the ECB of 16 April 2014, establishing the framework for cooperation within the SSM between the ECB and national competent authorities and with national designated authorities (