Enria, a European born in Bocconi

A passion for European integration born in Bocconi that then marked his professional career, recalled Andrea Enria, President of the ECB's Supervisory Board, receiving on Friday the 2020 Bocconi Alumnus of the Year award. The award was presented in Frankfurt by Riccardo Monti, President of the Bocconi Alumni Community, during a ceremony with Mario Monti, President of Bocconi, Gianmario Verona, Rector, Francesco Giavazzi, Vice President of the International Advisory Council, and Riccardo Taranto, Managing Director, connected in streaming from Milan.

Paying homage to Enria from Milan was also Mario Draghi, former president of the ECB. "You have made supervision very effective. You have combined: the intrusiveness of supervision; the balance in dosing the great powers it has; your knowledge of the European economy and your knowledge of the European decision-making process," stressed Draghi.

In receiving the prize, Enria recalled how Bocconi impacted on his European spirit. "Bocconi University was also where I first came into contact with the subject of European integration which has played such a great part in my working life. This was the time when the Single European Act came into being, following the Intergovernmental Conference under the Italian Presidency of the EU, which established the creation of the single market by 1992 as an essential objective for ensuring the economic and political progress of the European Community. As regards economics, the debate in Italy was centred around Bocconi University, with Mario Monti and Franco Bruni specifically playing a key role," recalled Enria.

A graduate in political economy in 1987, Enria joined the Bank of Italy in 1988 and, at the foundation of the ECB in 1999, he moved to Frankfurt. In 2004, he moved to London as Secretary General of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors. Then, in 2008, he returned to the Bank of Italy where he headed the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Department, until he became the first Chair of the newly formed EBA (European Banking Authority) in 2011. In 2018 the ECB nominated him President of the Supervisory Board.

"The lessons learnt during those years in Bocconi were extremely valuable in terms of my subsequent professional experience, when my economics training had to be steered towards complex regulatory issues and put to use in making comprehensive changes to institutional arrangements, with banking regulatory and supervisory responsibilities being gradually shifted towards the European level," said Enria.

Andrea Enria's speech