Europe’s policy makers are sounding increasingly confident about the outcome of the stress tests to which they are subjecting their banks.

Over the past 48 hours, bigwigs as diverse as International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker and Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi have made soothing noises about the likely outcome of the tests, suggesting that the authorities are confident they have found a way of convincing financial markets that the tests are stringent enough, without making impossible capital calls on the 91 banks involved.

“When we have the results we will no doubt see that banks are solid enough to resist shocks that could result from a state in crisis,” Mr Strauss-Kahn told French TV channel France 24.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Juncker, meanwhile, told Austrian newspaper Kurier on Friday: “I expect no great catastrophes,” and added: “there can be no embellishments, as they will be overtaken by reality”.

In Dublin, Irish Central Bank governor and banking regulator Patrick Honohan sounded an equally relaxed note. “We expect that the banks will meet the capital requirements set out by us, which we believe are sufficient to withstand future stress scenarios,” he said.

“A combination of capital raising and asset disposals, underpinned by government support, should ensure they meet those targets by December,” Mr Honohan said, adding that Bank of Ireland plc and Allied Irish Banks plc will undergo additional domestic stress tests.

There has been concern that neither banks nor some governments would be able to access capital markets to fill the holes in bank balance sheets that the tests are likely to expose. Such fears had concentrated on Greece and Spain, countries that combine high levels of vulnerability in both the banking system and government finances.

However, European Union finance ministers agreed on Tuesday on a procedure by which countries can tap the EU’s massive new Financial Support Facility, the EFSF, if they need to ensure they have enough funds to recapitalise failing banks.

Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said that governments would be able to borrow from the EFSF, which has total funds of €500 billion at its disposal, to replenish their bank rescue funds as a last resort, but that such support would always come with hard conditions.

Details on the exact nature of the tests remained frustratingly scarce on Friday. However, knowledgeable people across Europe told Dow Jones Newswires that national regulators are likely to publish their aggregated and bank-by-bank results after local financial markets close next Friday, in order to allow the findings to be absorbed in relative calm over the weekend.

Crucially, it remained unclear what level of capital the regulators will use to determine whether a bank has passed or failed. Indications are that the exact criterion was deliberately left out of the questionnaire sent to banks to stop them massaging their books in order to be able to meet a fixed target.

People with knowledge of the situation say that the regulators will probably require banks to have a six per cent ratio of Tier 1 capital to assets, matching the criterion used by US banks. This is more than the four per cent banks are required to maintain under the Bank for International Settlements’ Basel II regulations.

Some reports, however, have suggested that the key ratio will be related to a “core Tier 1” measure. This is a stricter ratio of capital including only paid-up equity and cash reserves, and excludes the hybrid debt securities on which many European banks rely. However, the concept of core Tier 1 exists only within the context of long and far-from-concluded negotiations on an updated framework for capital adequacy, dubbed Basel III.

“It would be difficult to base the results of the tests on a concept that has no basis in existing law,” one banking source said on Friday.