The Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) is this week expected to state its position on the rules establishing the single resolution authority and fund, the pillars of the future EU banking strategy.

The council is making progress in discussions on banking union, but council members haven't reached a final agreement on allowing for "ordered failure" of a bank. Finance ministers are considering giving most power in bank-failure decisions to a board that would operate separately from the European Commission while leaving ultimate control to ministers acting as the Ecofin council. An Ecofin meeting to finalise the decision takes place on Wednesday, ahead of a summit on Thursday and Friday.

“On the Single Resolution Mechanism, we have no formal result in our pocket or on the table but we made a huge leap forward defining the concrete directions and schemes,” Lithuanian finance minister and current chair of the Ecofin council Rimantas Šadžius said.

All countries now accept the principle that if banks get into difficulty, then it will not be the taxpayer but the investors and creditors that bear the costs.

Meanwhile, a symposium on the “financialisation of society” is taking place at TCD tomorrow. It has been argued that there is a negative relationship between the rate of growth of finance and the rate of growth of total factor productivity, something which the symposium will examine. It will also look at whether excessive growth in the financial sector can have a negative impact on economic growth.