The Council of the European Union is closing in on a compromise that would require fewer banks to issue expensive bail-in debt, Central Banking’s sister publication Risk.net has learned – a stance that may be welcomed by lenders that escape the regime, but which raises the risk of public bail-outs continuing for those entities.

Greece and Portugal are among the countries where no bank would be caught by the council’s proposed new threshold, set at €100 billion ($117 billion) in assets, rather