[10]Council Regulation (EU) No 1024/2013 of 15 October 2013 conferring specific tasks on the ECB concerning policies relating to the prudential supervision of credit institutions (SSM Regulation), OJ L 287, 29.10.2013, p. 63. [11]The provisions of Article 130 TFEU are also mirrored in Article 7 of the Statute of the ESCB, which is annexed to the Treaty as Protocol Number 4. [12]Similar classifications are used in the in  ECB convergence reports, adopted on the basis of Article 140(1) of the Statute of the ESCB , which assess the progress made by non-euro area Member States in fulfilling their Treaty obligations regarding the achievement of economic and monetary union. [13]Case C-62/14 Gauweiler and Others v Deutscher Bundestag, para. 75 (ECLI:EU:C:2015:400). [14]The ECB has its own capital, which is paid up by the national central banks (Article 28 of the Statute of the ESCB) and other assets, including claims relating to the allocation of euro banknotes within the Eurosystem, securities held for monetary policy purposes, foreign reserves and other financial assets. The ECB’s accounts are audited by independent external auditors recommended by the ECB and approved by the Council (Article 27.1 of the Statute of the ESCB) and the competence of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) is limited to examining the operational efficiency of the management of the ECB (Article 27.2 of the Statute of the ESCB). [15]BVerfG,  2 BvR 2728/13, 14 January 2014.

In particular, it features a flexible and shock-dependent medium-term horizon, meaning that monetary policy does not  http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2017/html/sp170330.en.html[03.04.2017 15:53:14]  Central bank independence revisited  automatically respond to shocks, unless there is a risk of these shocks becoming embedded in inflation expectations. And it also features a monetary pillar. Under this pillar, trends in credit markets are monitored, and factored into policy decisions, even when inflation has not moved. [57] As a built-in feature, this ensures a certain leaning-againstthe-wind attitude in policymaking. However, although the ECB’s two-pillar monetary policy strategy incorporates financial stability considerations, macroprudential policy cannot seek to impose its needs on the monetary pillar. Against this background, one may wonder why microprudential supervision was not considered sufficient to address financial stability issues. One reason is that microprudential supervision is aimed at ensuring the soundness of individual financial institutions by mitigating their vulnerability to idiosyncratic risks. However, setting up a regulatory framework which guarantees the soundness of individual banks does not automatically ensure the soundness of the financial system as a whole. Financial institutions’ inter-connectedness contributes to generating systemic risk, even when such institutions, taken in isolation, seem sound. Moreover, since financial institutions tend to engage in similar investment strategies both in upturns and downturns of the financial cycle, over time common exposures to similar sets of risks can create financial imbalances or credit disruptions, leading to pro-cyclicality. When a shock surfaces, interconnections may contribute to amplifying expansionary and contractionary phases of the financial cycle.