It's very nice indeed to welcome so many of you to the cell's lunchtime seminar.

I have particular pleasure in introducing to you Jonathan Ford, who is actually a man of great importance.

And he is currently the Director General for Internal Market, so an issue that we're all directly with concerned with here. But he's

a man who's worn a number of controversial hats, in particular in his previous job in what

was the justice in home affairs, and now the almost unpronounced by, I don't know if you ever got

the acronym right, but the area of freedom of justice and security and all other good things that the EU does so he did that

for seven years and he was a senior press officer before that so he knows the

EU inside out and obviously is now handling one of the most contentious

controversial portfolios on Banking Union.

I'm going to give the floor to Johnson. He's kindly agreed to speak for about 40 minutes,

and then he will take questions from you.

Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Thank you very much indeed, Catherine, and good afternoon to your, ladies and gentlemen.

It's a pleasure to be here. I'm going to talk about

some of the legal issues of financial reform in the European Union. In the face of all the

human tragedy that the current financial and economic crisis has caused, it's almost embarrassing

to dwell on the challenge

it has posed for lawyers, but it has thrown up a number of extremely delicate and important

legal issues. And I can imagine that your questions will draw me onto that rocky terrain as well is also very much at the heart of various political convulsions in the European Union in this country as well.

So this is a matter of enormous significance.

The EU's institutional legal systems have survived other crises in the past, but this is a particular big one,

and I suppose, particularly big one, and I suppose with hindsight we will see, historians will say that the creation of the euro really was a game changer and has led the euro area countries and with them probably most or all of continental Europe down a particular path. We don't know where it leads exactly,

...