The stability of the European banking system has been recently tested by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and then by the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022. Both events have forced the European Central Bank to implement many recovery measures. Despite having vastly different fundamentals, those events have led to the new economic reality with high interest rates and return on equity below the cost of equity for most European banks. 
The paper aims to assess how pandemic and war impacted the banking sector and its stability. The analysis relies on data provided by public international authorities, global banking advisors, and open-access databases such as Eurostat. The overall, conclusion is  that these neither events pushed the entire sector to the brink of collapse. The primary reason for this outcome was the implementation of measures established following the global financial crisis 2008.