The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published its second report benchmarking national loan enforcement and insolvency frameworks across European Union Member States, prepared in response to the European Commission’s call for advice under the Savings and Investment Union agenda. Using EU-wide and country-level benchmarks, the analysis finds a high degree of dispersion in recovery outcomes across Member States and loan categories, and points to the legal framework and judicial capacity as key drivers of recovery rates and time to recovery. The report draws on loan-by-loan data covering more than 1.4 million loans and benchmarks three asset classes (firms, large corporates and small and medium-sized enterprises) across gross and net recovery rates, time to recovery and judicial cost to recovery. For firms at the EU 27 aggregate level, gross recovery rates were broadly stable (42.5% in 2018Q4 versus 42.2% in 2023Q3), while net recovery rates declined (40.6% to 37.6%), judicial costs fell (4.3% to 3.5%) and average time to recovery increased (3 years to 4.2 years), pointing to higher costs outside pure judicial expenses. The legal system underpinning the enforcement framework is identified as a significant explanatory factor; features associated with better outcomes include out-of-court collateral enforcement tools, creditor committees, SME debt restructuring options and pre-defined triggers for collective insolvency proceedings, although the impact of reforms varies by legal origin. Compared with the 2020 exercise, the analysis relied on an extraction of the Eurosystem Analytical Credit Dataset (AnaCredit) approved by the European Central Bank Governing Council in March 2023, supplemented by additional data collection including for non-euro area banks. The EBA notes the results are largely aligned with prior findings, with some country-level differences linked to data sources, macroeconomic conditions, methodological factors and data quality.

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