The Protection of Savings in European Banking Law: Public Interest and the Protection of the Individual

Abstract

This article examines the systemic position of the public interest in the protection of savings within the framework of European bank crisis regulation, assessing its normative role in the current architecture of the EU Banking Union. Starting from a reconstruction of the traditional doctrinal debate on the constitutional nature of savings – historically oscillating between a public-law and a private-law perspective – the paper investigates whether the evolution of EU banking law has led to the predominance of one of these paradigms or to their structural transformation.

Through an analysis of the European law, particularly the bank resolution framework and the mechanisms of bail-in and burden sharing, this study argues that the protection of savings has not disappeared from the EU legal order but has been reconfigured within a regulatory model grounded in private responsibility and preventive management of systemic risk.

The article advances a theoretical interpretation based on the concept of the normative influence of public interests, maintaining that European bank crisis regulation can no longer be adequately explained through the rigid public/private dichotomy. By contrast, it reflects a process of hybridization and co-evolution of those interests, whereby the protection of savings operates as a complex principle shaping both systemic stability and individual legal positions.