ABSTRACT
Although there is no overarching initiative in the EU that would be comparable to the Dodd-Frank Act, the European Commission brought forward more than forty measures to reform its financial architecture in response to the crisis that significantly altered the regulatory architecture of European financial regulation and deepened the single market in financial services. Any mechanism-based explanation of regulatory change must start with the contextual conditions that allow the hypothesized mechanism to function. The financial crisis had considerably reshaped the context in which regulatory reform was taking place. While financial sector groups faced a difficult post-regulatory environment to promote their demands, political opportunities for pro-reform increased. Groups that had never been involved in finance before reported that they started working on financial issues after the crisis. A European supervisory framework was opposed by parts of the financial industry, notably the German Landesbanks, savings and cooperative banks, which reportedly influenced the German position.
