12.5.2 Has the Commission consistently taken into account these relevant characteristics?

In principle, burden-sharing by shareholders is always required. This means that one of the forms of burden-sharing should be present. In other words: the shareholders should either be expropriated in the context of a nationalisation, be written-down, be diluted, participate in a capital raise or remain at the bank in liquidation. Since burden-sharing by shareholders is in principle always required, the Commission should always assess whether one of these types of burden- sharing is present.

It is worth stressing that the Commission should not only assess whether there is burden-sharing; it should also assess whether the burden-sharing is sufficient. The assessment whether there is sufficient burden-sharing depends on the exact modalities of the burden-sharing. For instance, the fact that the shareholders of a nationalised bank receive a compensation makes the burden-sharing less burdensome (than a nationalisation without any compensation).

In addition, there are various types of burden-sharing which can to a certain extent be considered as alternatives. This raises the following question: are these types of burden-sharing equivalent to each other? In other words: are they equally burdensome? The answer to this question depends on the exact modalities of the burden-sharing. Given the importance of the precise modalities of the burden-sharing, the various types of burden-sharing are discussed in-depth in the following subsection.