The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Tuesday, July 15, the launch of a bank resistance test campaign in 2026 on Tuesday, July 15, aimed at geopolitical risk, intensifying an exercise carried out this year.
“Banks must strengthen their ability to resist immediate economic and financial threats and serious geopolitical clashes,” said the president of the bank supervisor inside the ECB, Claudia Buch, during an audience in the European Parliament.
The global economy has suffered in recent years the repercussions of multiple geopolitical crises, such as Russian invasion in Ukraine or tensions with China.
In this thematic exercise, the ECB will ask banks to evaluate “specific geopolitical scenarios” that can seriously affect their solvency, “he said, without giving more details.
110 worried banks
This will continue the work began during the resistance test of this year carried out with the European Banking Authority (Abe) to evaluate the capacity of the main European banks to deal with a scenario of aggravation tensions.
The results of this exercise are related to almost 110 banks that represent approximately 75 % of EU bank assets are expected in early August.
The ECB regularly performs resistance tests to evaluate the strength of the euro zone banks in the face of various economic and financial signs, similar to cyber attacks or climatic events, considering possible effects, especially in their credit portfolios.
These exercises aim to ensure that banks have sufficient capital to absorb losses in case of a crisis, thus contributing to the resilience of the European banking system.
Source: BFM TV
