EU to unveil new plans to wind-up failing banks

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Commission will on Wednesday unveil new plans for winding up failing banks, one of the pillars of the European Union's (EU) drive towards an integrated eurozone 'banking union'.

The idea, according to a presentation seen by AFP, is to avoid taxpayer bailouts and to ensure that essential functions - including functioning ATMs for the time it takes to deal with a bank's collapse - are maintained across national borders.

The latest EU response to the sovereign and banking debt crisis is to integrate the eurozone's national banking systems in a bid to avoid investor flight or runs on banks in one country, such as Spain, dragging down the entire system.

Since the global financial crisis bit in late 2008, a succession of banks - Lehman Brothers, Icelandic banks, Fortis, Anglo Irish or Dexia - have crashed, at huge cost to massively stretched public purses.