Brussels, 01/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - The member states are steaming ahead in their negotiations over the draft directive to change the rules governing saver deposit systems (see EUROPE 10173 and 10169). Aiming to reach broad agreement at the Tuesday 15 June ECOFIN Council, the Hungarian Presidency has submitted a new compromise to the delegations, suggesting that the national savings deposit systems are funded ahead of any crisis to the tune of 1% of the total savings covered in 15 years' time. When they adopted a draft report by Peter Simon (S&D, Germany) recently, MEPs suggest 1.5% over the same time period (see EUROPE 10385).
The amount each bank will have to supply to the fund will be decided in terms of the risks run by the bank in question along with another non-risk related amount which will not provide more than half of the total contributions. Indicators suggested for deciding how much the risk-related sum should be include credit risk, market risk and liquidity risk.
Although national savings deposit schemes will mostly be used to compensate savers whose money is lost if their bank or building society goes bankrupt, they may also be used to bail out struggling financial institutions. The draft Hungarian Presidency compromise suggests that national schemes should provide compensation to savers within 20 working days and this would apply by 2014 at the latest. The MEPs suggest that the 20 day deadline for providing compensation should continue until 2017, but savers should be given the first €5,000 within 5 days to cover immediate needs. (M.B./transl.fl)