Brussels, 07/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - Dutch Finance Minister and head of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem, talked at a press conference on Tuesday 7 May on the future of economic and monetary union (EMU) about stress tests on big banks: “The first thing that the ECB will have to do is to have an asset-quality review of the main banks that will be under their supervision, and soon after that all the other banks in Europe as well. The outcome... we don't know yet, but it might be worrying.”
“What I do know is that if we do have the outcome, if it's worrying, we need to have a way to deal with it,” he said, citing the need for euro-wide common bank resolution rules and the other crucial aspect of banking union, the eurozone bank supervision mechanism.
Dijsselbloem and Euro Commissioner Olli Rehn both said that harmonisation of savings guarantee schemes would be the last part of banking union to be introduced. Dijsselbloem said: “An EU-wide DGS is a necessary building block but will be the final one”, meaning that agreement on harmonising national savings guarantee schemes and bank resolution schemes would come first.
Fragmentation. “Financial fragmentation exacerbates cost associated with adjustment, (criticising) negative competitiveness shock for countries under programme. Each country has to put its house in order at EU level. It is crucial to advance towards banking union. We should aim at wide-scope financial union that would solve financial fragmentation”, said Portuguese Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar.
Commission President José Manuel Barroso said that, before the summer break, the European Commission will unveil proposals on prior coordination of macroeconomic policies. The European summit in June will be asked to set a “roadmap” for the strengthening of the social, economic, budget and policy arms of economic and monetary union. (MB/transl.fl)