Bail-In: Fully-Fledged Illusion?

The financial crisis has resulted in EU Member States having to pay massive amounts of money to rescue their banks. To protect taxpayers’ money in the future, the EU institutions have made some profound amendments to the legal framework, shifting the financial burden stemming from banks’ failures to some stakeholders, mainly on banks’ shareholders and unsecured creditors. This is a part of the banking union, the supervision on banks by one body is supplemented by the Single Resolution Fund. However, the details of such a system are disappointing because they do not guarantee that taxpayers’ money really will be protected in future crises, as envisaged.