Europe’s biggest financial rulemaking spree since the creation of its single market more than 20 years ago reached its finale yesterday with the adoption of a slew of landmark reforms designed to make banks safer and financial markets more transparent.

It marks the climax of a fraught four-year drive to end the era of taxpayer bailouts and fuse together control of eurozone lenders under a banking union. The votes in the European parliament cap the bloc’s lawmaking response to a crisis that spread from the financial turmoil of 2008 to leave at one stage the very existence of the euro in doubt.

Michel Barnier, the EU commissioner responsible for the reforms, sounded a note of caution. “We may have managed to avoid the worst — a complete collapse of our financial system, even the eurozone — but Europe continues to pay the economic and social price for this crisis.”

The centrepiece of the reforms was an EU-wide rule book to ensure shareholders and bondholders and not taxpayers are first in line to pay for bank rescues. Within the banking union a common resolution system will enforce those rules — forcing eurozone states to release their grip over domestic champions.

It comes alongside a complex overhaul of Europe’s capital markets, forcing this bank- dominated terrain to become more transparent and imposing the world’s toughest curbs on high-frequency traders.

“This is not the same magnitude as the 1930s — we are mainly changing rules that already exist. They started from scratch. But it is distinguished by the sheer volume and scope of regulation,” said André Sapir, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think-tank. “Europe had done a lot to integrate its markets but its rules were poor. They have done a lot on financial stability and laid the foundations to a banking union.”

The European parliament passed the welter of legislation in a final rush to clear the decks before the May election. “This is Europe’s equivalent of Super Tuesday,” said Simon Lewis, chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe in a reference to what is often the decisive day of voting in the US presidential primary calendar.

Almost 30 legislative files relating to financial services were passed during the parliament’s four-year term, driven initially by international G20 commitments and lately by the drive to shore up the eurozone.

Regulators are now faced with the big challenge of putting the complex legal texts into practice. It will take almost 400 separate technical standards, mainly crafted by three EU financial watchdogs created just three years ago.

“An awful lot is resting on the shoulders of the likes of the European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority — but do they have the resources necessary?” asked Mr Lewis.

Some unfinished business also remains for the next European Commission and the newly elected parliament, not least reform of financial benchmarks and Mr Barnier’s proposal to force big banks to hive off trading arms.

Many political battles also remain unsettled for the UK, which took its complaints over some rules — including a proposed financial transaction tax and banker bonus cap — to court.