In the early stages, it was assumed that the single financial market could work on the basis of mutual recognition: each country would accept the others’ regulation as broadly equivalent to its own and allow cross-border business to proceed on that basis. That proved inadequate, as standards and rules remained very different from country to country, and gave way to an approach based on minimum harmonization, whereby core rules were to be the same across Europe, but local variations and additions remained permissible.
过去二十年的泛欧洲监管之路充满了曲折和坎坷。在早期阶段，人们认为单一金融市场可以在互相承认的基础上运行：每个国家都同意其他国家的监管等同于其自身的监管，并允许以此为基础开展跨国业务。这被证明是不够的，因为不同国家的标准和规则差异太大。于是就产生了基于最低限度协调的方针，即全欧洲都采用相同的核心规则，同时允许地方差异和附加规则的存在。