With the approval of the Decree Law 99 of 25 June 2017, the Italian Government finalised the plan to resolve the crisis of Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca (V&V). The Ministry of Economy and Finance, acting on the proposal of the Bank of Italy, put the two banks into compulsory administrative liquidation ("liquidazione coatta amministrativa"). After a long incubation period, during which various attempts had been tried to recover V&V as a going concern, the definitive solution came by surprise as an exception to EU rules that would prescribe resolution as the standard remedy to a bank insolvency, in accord with the 2014 Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD).