Brussels, 12/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Discussions are said to be underway at the European Commission summit in order to determine which commissioner will end up with the responsibility for the banking union, if the European Council were to put this on stream. A source familiar with the dossier told EUROPE that it is the “perimeter” of the banking union that is at stake. If the banking union concerns the internal market, the relevant commissioner will be Michel Barnier. However, if banking union only concerns the eurozone, then the dossier could be entrusted to Olli Rehn, the commissioner responsible for single currency.
The governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, argued that the ECB and the central banks affiliated to it should become the “backbone” of the future banking union. “This is another lesson of the crisis. There are many advantages to keeping banking oversight close to the central bank”, he said in a column published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. The ECB and the 17 national central banks of the eurozone must also be able to monitor and supervise institutions with a presence or significant activity outside their borders, he said. Noyer went on to say that, in the United Kingdom and the United States, such developments have taken place. Within the eurozone, around a dozen countries have entrusted supervision of the major banking groups to their central bank. He went on to say that the setting in place of a unified supervisory authority was the “precondition” for setting up a single guarantee fund for bank deposits.
The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, renewed his call for a banking union. Such a union would include a single European supervisor for the major banks and a European guarantee fund for deposits and banking restructuring fuelled (why not?) by the proceeds of a banking tax or taxation on financial transactions, he told the Financial Times.
Hannes Swoboda, S&D Group President, for his part, criticised the time being taken by member states on this dossier. The heart of the issue, he deplored, is that the Council is too slow and is unable to understand what it must do sufficiently quickly. If they say no to the banking union, he said, they could well say the contrary in two years' time. (MB/CG/transl.jl)