Van Rompuy hopes to solve pension row

After the stress tests

The outcome of the stress-test exercise on EU banks will be assessed by finance ministers on 7 September. Commission officials said that Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, would sound out member states on whether to repeat the exercise, which covered 91 EU banks and in July revealed seven of them to be undercapitalised.

The exercise has been credited with improving market sentiment towards European banks, largely because, as a corollary to the exercise, banks revealed their holdings of EU sovereign debt. It was the first time that the EU had published bank-by-bank data from a stress test.

Ministers will also discuss the revised guidance that the Committee of European Banking Supervisors published in August on conducting stress tests. The guidance urges so-called reverse stress-tests, in which banks themselves determine what scenarios might threaten their survival, and what measures are necessary to counter them. The introduction of reverse stress-tests is opposed by a large part of the EU's banking sector, including the European Savings Bank Group, on the grounds that it would be burdensome.