As the European banking supervisor, the ECB can take a number of supervisory decisions, which are legally binding under the Single Supervisory Mechanism.
These include:
- setting microprudential capital requirements for significant banks;
- deciding on the significance status of supervised banks;
- granting or withdrawing banking licenses;
- assessing the acquisition of qualifying holdings in banks;
- assessing the suitability of significant banks’ management board members (and key function holders and third country branch managers if national law foresees it);
- adopting measures and imposing pecuniary sanctions on significant banks for breaches of directly applicable Union law; and
- assessing and, if necessary, applying higher macroprudential capital requirements ("buffers") and more stringent macroprudential measures set out in Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 and Directive 2013/36/EU.
The ECB mainly takes supervisory decisions in relation to significant banks under its direct supervision. For the issuance and withdrawal of authorisations to provide banking services, as well as for the assessment of acquisitions of qualifying holdings in banks, the ECB is competent for all SSM credit institutions (significant and less significant institutions). These supervisory tasks are referred to as “common procedures”.