European banking union
The European banking union refers to the transfer of responsibility for banking policy from the member state-level to the union-wide level in several EU member states, initiated in 2012 as a response to the 2009 Eurozone crisis. The motivation for the banking union was the fragility of numerous banks in the Eurozone, and the identification of a vicious circle between credit conditions for these banks and the sovereign credit of their respective home countries ("bank-sovereign vicious circle").