Brussels, 10/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Cypriot finance minister Vassos Shiarly wants reform of bank capital requirements (the CRD IV package of draft EU legislation) to be completed by the end of this year, when the new common eurozone bank supervision system under the aegis of the European Central Bank comes on stream. He was speaking on Tuesday 9 October in Luxembourg after an ECOFIN Council meeting, and listed the main elements on which the Council of Ministers and European Parliament need to reach agreement - special rules for too-big-to-fail banks, flexibility to enable member states to impose higher capital requirements in the form of liquidity buffers, cash ratios and the role of the European Banking Authority in the event of cross-border disagreements.
Internal Market Commission Michel Barnier said that rapid progress was needed to complete the process speedily as a matter of credibility, pointing out that the 8,000 or so European banks in question needed the system to be visible. Barnier said two further questions needed to be settled, namely caps on trading bonuses (a European Parliament demand) and the lightening of restrictions on bank lending to small businesses. He said that the United States and Japan had decided not to apply liquidity ratios. Two inter-institutional negotiating sessions have been scheduled, one on Thursday 11 October. (MB/transl.fl)