On 2 March, we wrote that the financial services in the City are preparing their post-Brexit strategies.

Some speak of opening subsidiaries or offices in other parts of the EU so as not to lose passporting rights. The various capitals of Europe are engaged in a race to attract as many companies from London as they can, with Paris and Frankfurt being among the front-runners.

We added that Malta sometimes features in reports about such relocation, but only as a minor player. It would seem, we added, although this is so far rather anecdotal, that Malta's niche is the insurance market.

It would be prudent to reserve judgment on this and not be carried away with facile promises that may not materialize.

Let us take a related activity, other than insurance.

Over the ;past days it has been reported that the eurozone's top banking watchdog has warned that it will take a tough line to policing banks that relocate operations from the UK in response to Brexit, saying that bankers must move enough staff and resources to the continent to cope with the risks they would run.

Daniele Nouy, the head of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, vowed, according to the Financial Times, to crack down on lenders seeking to save their market access on the cheap by running big operations through shell units or tiny branches, saying there could be no compromise when it came to financial stability.

Ms Nouy and her deputy Sabine Lautenschlager said some days ago they were braced for new strategies by banks that would have to adapt to losing coveted 'passporting' rights as a result of Britain's Brexit decision.

The passport allows banks and other financial groups to provide a wide range of services across the single market while only being legally domiciled in one EU country.

Ms Lautenschlager said that once the passport was gone, a simple method for banks wanting to safeguard access would be to relocate some operations to the euro area and apply for a banking licence from the SSM, something she said would come with stringent conditions. "We will only grant licences to well-capitalised and well-managed banks," she said.

"We will not accept empty shell companies. Any new entity must have adequate local risk management, sufficient local staff and operational independence."

All this is quite heartening for us Maltese to hear and reinforce the wisdom of joining the euro in 2008. Can one imagine what would have been our situation had we stayed out of the euro and then had to face all the financial crisis and its aftermath on our own?

After these long and hard years of the crisis, the EU is now fortunately turning a corner. Things are looking up and growth is re-appearing in most countries. Still, there are countries which are still battling the crisis, there are still far too many people out of work and the banks still face a mountain of bad debts that are slowly being brought to manageable proportions. So Europe is not out of the woods yet.