“Europe’s biggest financial rulemaking spree since the creation of its single market more than 20 years ago reached its finale on Tuesday with the adoption of a slew of landmark reforms designed to make banks safer and financial markets more transparent.”

“It marks the climax of a fraught four-year drive to end the era of taxpayer bailouts and fuse together control of eurozone banks under a banking union.”

“The votes in the European parliament cap the bloc’s lawmaking response to a crisis that spread from the financial turmoil of 2008 to leave at one stage the very existence of the euro in doubt.”

“Michel Barnier, the EU commissioner responsible for the reforms, said: “We may have managed to avoid the worst – a complete collapse of our financial system, even the eurozone – but Europe continues to pay the economic and social price for this crisis. Let us avoid complacency.”

“The centrepiece of the reforms was an EU-wide rule book to ensure shareholders and bondholders and not taxpayers are first in line to pay for bank rescues. Within the banking union a common resolution system will enforce those rules – compelling eurozone states to release their grip over their domestic champions.”

“It comes alongside a complex overhaul of Europe’s capital markets, forcing this bank-dominated terrain to become more transparent and imposing the world’s toughest curbs on high-frequency traders.”

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Read full Financial Times article here.