BRUSSELS — European Union governments want to shift the cost of 
rescuing troubled banks from taxpayers to the banks’ creditors, 
including the holders of large deposits as a last resort.

The finance ministers from the 27-nation bloc met Tuesday in 
Brussels to hammer out the new rules on how to fund bank rescues as part of their wider project to set up a banking union. 

The union is key to 
their plans to strengthen the financial sector avoid a repeat of the 
crisis. 

snip
 
Tuesday’s meeting focused on establishing a hierarchy of which bank 
creditors have to take losses — to be involved in a so-called “bail-in” — in case the bank needs rescuing. 
The ministers mostly agreed that 
banks’ shareholders and capital must take the first hit. After that, the pecking order becomes less clear, with junior and senior bond holders 
and, ultimately, all the banks’ clients on the line.

The ministers said holders of deposits of over 100,000 euros ($130,000) — the EU’s 
deposit insurance ceiling — could be asked to suffer losses. 
They said, 
however, that depositors would only be asked to take losses as a last 
resort and that there could be exceptions.
 All deposits below 100,000 
euros must and will be “sacrosanct,” insisted EU Commissioner Michel 
Barnier, who is in charge of financial market reform 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/eu-finance-ministers-seek-ways-to-reduce-tax-avoidance/2013/05/14/f3706622-bc68-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html