of things. First of all, just to put things in perspective, NPLs in Italy are coming down pretty rapidly. In terms of flows, they peaked at the end of 2014. In terms of stock, they peaked at the beginning of 2016. And during 2016, and more intensely this year, there has been a clear trend, a clear downward

trend. I think that Andre and Ria mentioned that in the previous panel. Why is that happening? Well, I would say 50 percent because of the strong improvement in the economic situation, so that flows of new bad loans are back to the level before the crisis.

And the other 50 percent is because of disposals, and there have been a number of high-profile disposals. Everybody knows about them because they are in the press. But there is also a number of smaller disposals that are also important.

So a market exists, and it's starting to work properly. But I would say that the first 50 percent is more important, because it's completely broad-based, and it's, in a way, structurally more important. That's the first point. Second point, if I make a reference to the previous panel, at some point, there

was a—in the resolution of Banks, there was a—I think that Professor Bank mentioned it, that the one difference between the Spanish popular case and the Italian Banque Veneta case was that, well, in the Italian case, the letter of the spirit of the law had

not been preserved exactly. I have to—frankly, no, I mean, in terms of the letter, the letter of the law was respected exactly, and I think that the European authorities, especially DG Comp, which is no

softy on stated rules, saw it to that, that the law was exactly respected. Whether the law is wise or not, whether it should have been entailed, a transition period, which I think Professor Bank also suggested, and in that I entirely agree with him, that

it might have been sensible to, in a way, have a kind of path to a new state, to a new steady state. But the law as it is, good or bad, I'm not questioning that, was exactly applied.

The spirit is very much in the eye of the beholder, but let me say that if the spirit of the new European system is to limit the taxpayer involvement in banking crisis, I have to say that if you look at the various countries in Europe, there are countries

who have put zillions of euros into their banking systems, and countries that have put a very limited amount of money, and in Italy, the second camp. And I would say that the Italian taxpayers in practice has paid more, significantly more, I think, for state intervention in other European countries, given the various schemes

of the mutualization than for Italian banks themselves. Which leads me to my third point, which is, at some point I think it was mentioned that one important difference in the management of non-performing loans in Italy and the

other two countries that are represented in that panel is that AMC was an important element. I don't deny that AMC is an important element, but let me say that there is also an important

difference in terms of, again, public money that was put into the various systems, almost nothing in Italy, and tens of billions in other countries. So that's an important difference. And why is that? I mean, early recognition, early intervention might be.

But let me point out that this is a difficult discussion, and of course I would be abusing my microphone if I entered into that. But let me say that there was difference in timing, not just timing of recognition, timing of emergence of the issue. In one case, as I think Mr. Romano Garcia said, the emergence of the issue, where

the issue of NPLs or problems in banking was an issue of financial losses, like in some other countries, that happened immediately after the big financial crisis.

When it was, like in Ireland and Spain, mainly an issue of real estate losses, it also emerged—it was not just an issue of recognition, it emerged before. In Italy, the issue of bad loans emerged after the double blow of a recession that

was the worst recession on record, worse even than the Great Depression in the 30s. So I mean, there was some lack of luck in timing, but we can discuss that. I mean, the issue of recognizing the issue of timing is extremely important, but it's also still an issue of the timing when the problem arose.

On the more general items and general issues, let me say that I concur entirely with the way John Fell put the problem. It's an important problem.

It has to be tackled, needs to be tackled seriously, speedily, but there are pros and cons to speed, so the optimal speed and not necessarily top speed. So it has to be faced very carefully with a variety of instruments, and I think that the panel agreed on that, and I also concur with a variety of instruments.

And the reason that this is very serious and has to be tackled very effectively is not just, or not mainly in my view, the fact that the existence of bad loans impairs the lending capacity of banks, which is at least dubious in the light of the evidence,

but the fact that we are now in a good period, we are now in a recovery. The good cycle is going on, but will not go on forever. So hopefully not next year, not in two years, not in five years, but at some point another recession will set in, and at that point we'd better be prepared.

Thank you very much. Thank you for those remarks. Everyone over here is telling me that I must stop. I'm sorry for those of you who wanted to raise credit, but the panel will be here all day, and there will be an opportunity to pose questions. I think you had a nice summary at the end of Luigi about the work that we're going

into now. So it's 12 o'clock exactly. I did the job.