Brussels, 22/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 21 September, the Commissioner for the Euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, confirmed the European Commission's intention of presenting an initiative to set in place a European bank deposit guarantee scheme “in the next few months”.
“Ideally, the Banking Union also requires that depositors' confidence in banks does not depend on the financial situation of individual member states”, Dombrovskis said in a speech on the future of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) at Berlin's Humboldt University. Based on the report of the 'five presidents', which calls for a gradual approach to strengthening the EMU (see EUROPE 11340), he confirmed that “in the coming months, the European Commission will announce proposals for a European deposit insurance scheme, starting with a reinsurance scheme for national deposit guarantee schemes”.
In itself, this announcement of a two-stage approach to completing banking union within the eurozone is not new. However, it comes 10 days after an informal Ecofin Council following which Dombrovskis declined to be drawn on any timetable for the work (see EUROPE 11388). Over the course of ministerial discussions, Germany expressed its opposition to the idea of immediately starting a further process of pooling financial risks.
On the long-term vision of the EMU, the Commissioner said that “sooner or later”, the Europeans will be looking at treaty change in order to start a new political integration process. Until such time, the reflection underway should allow certain principles to be set in place. According to Dombrovskis, any attempt to centralise socio-economic policy decision-making in the eurozone 'in Brussels' will be doomed to failure. Similarly, moving towards any broader share-out of the risks must go hand in hand with a tightening up of the rules and increased sharing of sovereignty. The Commissioner referred to the example of the creation of a “Eurozone Treasury”, which could help the eurozone countries to absorb economic 'shocks', as long as decision-making within this institution were collective. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)