Europe? For Antonio It Is the Crowning of a Dream

"Working for the European institutions was my childhood dream." From his window at the ECB's headquarters in Frankfurt, Antonio Luca Riso, a Bocconi student during his PhD in International Law of Economics, recalls exactly the moment in which the ambition to give a supranational dimension to his professional prospects matured. "In the '90s, the Regional Council of Calabria sent its citizens a magazine on its institutional activities and one day, attached, they also sent the Maastricht Treaty," recalls the current Section Head of Horizontal Services of the Directorate-General for Legal Services of the European Central Bank. "I read it and understood almost nothing about it, but it was clear to me that the European Union was becoming important, that it would affect my future and that I would have to study law to understand its fundamental rules." From that realization followed a course of study in law concluding in a thesis on banking supervisors that did not go unnoticed in an ECB competition and that turned out to be somewhat prophetic. "When in 2012 the European institutions decided to create the bailout fund, the so-called ESM, the SSM was also included in the package of planned measures. It was a function to be created from scratch and we worked in a startup-like situation for a year and a half blazing a new trail. Today the ECB is one of the largest supervisory authorities in the world (if not the largest) in terms of the number of supervised assets. Thanks to the work done in recent years, the European banking system is more attuned to the application of the rules and has improved its efficiency at the service of the real economy. But above all, it is more solid and has proven able to withstand crises."

Today, as manager of the Legal Service, Riso has oversight of four areas. A first area is that of process management, with functions comparable to those of a registry in a court. With this in mind, the second line of work concerning technological advancement was developed, aimed at assessing whether and how to integrate technological innovations into processes. A third area is knowledge management, where the goal is to maintain the knowledge and skills developed within the legal service at the highest possible level. Finally, a fourth area of work concerns legal research and deals in particular with the organization of conferences, meetings, but also scholarships and competitions on legal issues in matters of interest to the ECB. "These are, in many cases, back-office jobs which take place behind the scenes, but that is where the value of the figure of the European civil servant is fully expressed," comments Riso. "The success of an official, especially at a central bank, is in the ability to carry out their task without looking for the limelight or the role of protagonist. Working in these areas is probably not the best option for anyone with clear ambitions for visibility." This does not diminish the importance of the role, on the contrary. "Ensuring the day-to-day functioning of the European institutions by making the bureaucratic machine more efficient is a very concrete way of contributing to the process of European integration. The European Union and its institutions are founded on the rule of law. It is up to us to ensure that this abstract principle is applied in practice in the multitude of decisions that are taken on a daily basis. And it is up to us to defend these decisions and their compliance with the law when it is challenged in court, but also to maintain a channel of communication with academia to ensure that our opinions are always up to date with the latest developments in legal doctrine, and to foster dialogue between the stakeholders involved."