Banking Crisis Management in the EU: An Interim Assessment

Director Jean Pisani-Ferry and Senior Fellow André Sapir provide an in-depth examination of the the banking crisis in the European Union, starting with a discussion of the pre-crisis banking landscape and including an assessment of the management of the crisis and the lessons learned going forward. The authors argue that the EU was institutionally ill-prepared to manage the crisis, with the response characterised by ad hoc actions and a lack of transparency. They say, however, that coordination has remarkably not been impeded by a divide within the euro area and policy performance has been better than expected given the sub-optimal nature of EU financial institutional arrangements.