EU bank rescue rules in doubt, even for enforcers

Frankfurt

SOME senior regulators are privately raising doubts over whether politically unpopular European rules seeking to shield taxpayers from bank bailouts will ever be fully enforced.

"Bail-ins" were trumpeted as the centrepiece of Europe's response to the financial crisis, but some of the people who will have to apply them are now questioning in private whether they will be used following the Italian government's rescue of the troubled Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

The bail-in rules demand that private investors must suffer some loss…