This overview article provides an introduction to the 2025 Macroprudential Stress Test Extension Report (MaSTER), released as the 32nd edition of the Macroprudential Bulletin, which investigates how the EU-wide stress test and its extensions provide a broader assessment of the systemic vulnerabilities of euro area banks. The 2025 EU-wide stress test results are expanded via a top-down model-based toolkit to assess additional risks, perform policy simulation exercises, and present novel approaches to gauging the severity of the adverse scenario. In this article, lessons are drawn from these extended stress tests through a comparative analysis of capital depletion. Overall, available results support authorities’ cautious approach to capital buffers. They suggest that, while most banks are resilient to the tested shocks, considering risks not monitored under the current EBA methodology (such as climate risk, liquidity risk and contagion risk) may uncover new vulnerabilities. These exercises, conditioned on the EBA’s 2025 adverse scenario, depend on the selected transmission channels and explore a relevant albeit partial set of risks.
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