The European Banking Authority had pledged that this time it would be different – that the stress tests it had applied to 90 banks in 21 countries would “assess the resilience of the banks involved…against an adverse but plausible scenario”.

But investors and analysts from across the financial sector criticised the tests for again letting banks off too lightly - with only eight failing to pass the core Tier 1 threshold of 5% under their adverse scenario. They comprised of five from Spain, two from Greece, and one from Austria.