The ongoing Euro crisis and the worse economic development in Europe than in the USA are grounded, not the least in the delayed implementation of reforms of the banking sector. Whereas the leaks in economic governance of EMU have been fixed the banking sector is still not stabilised, even five years after Lehman Brothers. From the grand solution of a "European Banking Union" (EBU) only the first pillar, the European Bank Supervision with the single supervisory mechanism (SSM) will come into effect in 2014. The other necessary steps – the single resolution mechanism (SRM) and the single deposit guarantee mechanism (SDM) – will follow later. Until the "Europeanisation" will take place the bank recovery and resolution will be managed nationally based on EU law. A first evaluation indicates that the potential benefits of solving bank problems via the resolution mechanism of a new EBU would be distributed unequally between the member countries of the EU/Euro area. Germany would be the biggest loser, Spain and the Netherlands the biggest winners. Of the non-euro countries, the UK and Sweden have the most to gain, but Poland would lose. The country-specific gains of EBU depend on the number and size of banks which are located in a country. It is, however, not yet clear whether the goal of macroeconomic stabilising of bank resolutions would be better achieved when executed via the SRM or with the ESM, both for the countries affected and for the Euro area as a whole.
