Brussels, 11/12/2013 (Agence Europe) - Tempers rose in the evening of Tuesday 10 December between the Netherlands and Sweden before the Ecofin Council gave the Lithuanian Presidency a negotiating mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament on Wednesday over the draft BRRD directive harmonising national bank resolution schemes.
One of the stumbling blocks is the EP's desire (Gunnar Hökmark, EPP, Sweden, is the rapporteur) to include “public stabilisation tools” in the directive. Countries like Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands and Romania fear that this system for allowing state bailouts of failed banks would weaken the idea of making the private sector pay through the bail-in mechanism that requires private investors in a bank to cough up before any public money is forthcoming.
The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, backed publicly by a number of other minsters, said that they had spent two nights drawing up a compromise on the order of bail-in contributions that is clear and sets fair rules that allow for some flexibility. He stressed that it was a compromise and he had the feeling that the Swedish negotiating position had been smuggled back in via a Swedish rapporteur. He said he would be very disappointed if that was the way things were to be done. Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg angrily described the comment as highly inappropriate, but put it down to exhaustion after a mammoth 15-hour meeting. (MB/transl.fl)