THE FINANCIAL STABILITY OF THE ROMANIAN BANKING SYSTEM IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Abstract

Reforms to the European banking system aim to increase commercial banks’ ability to withstand various shocks and volatility of the current economic and social environment. Changes to European and international legislative framework aimed among other things, the level of capital adequacy and quality of loan portfolios, which are most affected by the turmoil arising in financial markets. Thus, it was considered appropriate to studying these two groups of prudential ratios, over a period of 9 financial years (2007-2015) at 8 banking systems in Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Romania. The results obtained showed that the Romanian banking system has an adequate level of capital, although the quality of loan portfolios has significantly decreased, especially in the last period of the research. National Bank of Romania’s involvement in the significant reduction of risk and sovereign debt crisis contributed to the increase of comparability of the Romanian banking market with the European market. Major problems have been reported in the Greek and Italian banking systems, largely affected by the sovereign debt crisis.