The incomplete Banking Union

The creation of a European banking union has been formulated as a political objective in the wake of the global financial and economic crisis. It aims to make the European banking market more stable, secure, and competitive. In particular, in the event of future banking crises, recourse to taxpayers` funds to rescue failing banks should be prevented. In addition, the aim is to advance the single European market for the banking sector by creating uniform rules and uniform implementation and enforcement of these rules, leading to a level playing field throughout the EU. The project investigates the legal implementation of these political objectives and examines to what extent the implementation of the Banking Union has succeeded approximately 15 years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis. Due to the explicitly jurisprudential approach, specific legal questions arise, which, for example, shed light on the constitutional and rule-of-law framework conditions and limits that are relevant for the implementation of the Banking Union. In particular, the project examines the degree to which the objective of a uniform framework could be achieved, and which legal instruments were used to do so. It will be shown how a uniform set of rules is established through the interaction of Union law, national law and sub-legal forms of governance (so-called soft law), as there are constitutional limits to complete unification through Union law. In addition, it is explained how the creation of new forms of cooperation (so-called single supervisory and single resolution mechanisms) between national and European authorities under the central control of the European bodies can also ensure uniform forms of enforcement, although here too legal limits to central control or purely European administrative activity are to be found. In addition to these positive developments, which show a high degree of legal convergence, the project also shows negative side effects of these developments. Examples include the high degree of complexity of regulations and enforcement structures caused by the constitutional framework conditions, the strong position of the authorities at the expense of parliamentary processes, and the lack of uniform procedural rules. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the situation could be improved in these areas in the future without reducing the effectiveness and uniformity of the achieved status quo of the Banking Union.