Actual buckling curves are always characterised by the erosion of ideal buckling curves. In case of compact sections this erosion is due to the imperfections, while for thin-walled members, a supplementary erosion is induced by the phenomenon of coupled instabilities. The ECBL approach- Erosion of Critical Bifurcation Load - represents a practical and convenient tool to characterise the instability behaviour of thin-walled members. The present state-of-art paper describes the theoretical background of this method and the applications to cold-formed steel sections in compression and bending. Special attention is paid to the evaluation methods of erosion coefficient and to their validation. The ECBL approach can be also used to the plastic-elastic interactive buckling of thin-walled members, and the paper provides significant results on this line.