Two women are instrumental in handling the EU economy.  The European Union passed the first in a series of critical reforms, establishing a new centralized supervisory authority over the monetary union’s largest banks. In October 2014, European Central Bank will have access to financial data for banks across the continent. This authority will be used to identify bank weaknesses before they threaten the EU, as they did during the European sovereign debt crisis.

It’s the first of three pillars that European leaders say would guarantee a similar crisis doesn’t occur in the future. The other two – the creation of a joint deposit guarantee account and the authority to wind down banks with a unified financial backstop – will be considered in the coming year. The passage of the first pillar is another sign of economic progress for a continent where the news has been bleak for years. The EU and the world have two people in particular to thank for that progress: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde.