Playing the creation of the European banking union: what union for which Member States?

The article explores the main competing visions of a fully-fledged European banking union. Building on a historic overview of principal choices related to the previous European banking policy reforms, it identifies four ‘ideal’ models of the new institutional framework: full, corrective, preventive and incomplete. The empirical analysis of national preferences on key policy options related to the recent banking policy overhaul reveals that in the final stages of negotiations the majority of Member States and EU institutions strongly preferred the ‘full’ banking union model, defined by a full scope of supranational supervision and a high degree of bank risk sharing. However, the results of the EU bargaining process show that recent agreements better correspond to the ‘preventive’ banking union form. The article adds a new perspective to the existing accounts on the creation of the banking union, suggesting how an open-ended definition of European initiatives contributes to deepening integration.