Resumen
The proposal for a European banking union represents the more recent effort to drive the Eurozone countries towards the effective adoption of a single rulebook and a single supervisory handbook, at the same time endowing them with a centralised mechanism for the resolution of bank crises. The new institutional framework should help to disconnect banking operations from the vicissitudes of sovereign debts, to reverse the recent re-nationalisation of finance and to restore the effectiveness of ECB monetary policy. Although the new framework would mark a significant advancement with respect to the present situation, its predictable incomplete adoption, restricted to the single supervisory mechanism, coupled with the unwillingness to burden it with legacy problems, will most likely produce opposite results from its inception. Although the full implementation of the proposal would not constitute a departure from the political de-centralised design that has so far dominated the European construction, the potential fiscal implications of a centralised resolution mechanism have raised the same barriers that have so far impeded to complete the design initiated with the Maastricht Treaty. JEL Codes: E02, F33, G18