Brussels, 20/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 19 April, many members of the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the European Parliament expressed their regrets at the slowness with which the work on the proposal to bring in a European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS) is progressing, some of them even interpreting this as a manoeuvre to delay the creation of the third pillar of Banking Union in the Eurozone (see EUROPE 11448).
“We need to speed up the talks to complete Banking Union”, said Elisa Ferreira (S&D, Portugal). Sylvie Goulard (ALDE, France) stressed the need to get to work “more intensively” on the EDIS dossier, due to the potential political turbulence which could arise from the British referendum in late June and elections in Germany and France in 2017. “Taking a bit of time to go into depth is a good thing, but it shouldn't look like a tactical move”, she added. “I get the impression that some people want to slow things down”, said Dimitrios Papadimoulis (GUE/NGL, Greece), calling on his colleagues “not to wait to see which way the wind is blowing at the Council”. Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium) said that “some people are using the argument of reducing the (financial) risks to avoid doing the work”. Like Goulard, he feels that the European work on reducing and sharing financial risks in the banking sector, which is on the agenda of the informal Ecofin Council to be held at the end of this week in Amsterdam (see EUROPE 11533), should “move forward in parallel”. His group, moreover, will be making specific proposals to plug the gaps in the banking prudential rules. Firmly of the view that Banking Union needs “three pillars”, Pablo Zalba Bidegain (EPP, Spain) said that the majority of MEPs in the parliamentary committee believe that the EDIS is “not an adequate condition, but necessary”.
Introducing the debates, Esther de Lange (EPP, Netherlands), the rapporteur on this dossier, said that the matter was seen differently from different viewpoints. She explained that the approach supported by 80% to 90% of the MEPs is the consumer protection perspective; at the commission, the favoured approach is that of the harmonisation of the financial markets; at the Council of the EU, the question is more related to governance and the responsibility of the member states. de Lange referred to the debate between the member states on the 'single market' legal basis ( article 114 of the treaty), on which the proposed Regulation is based (see EUROPE 11532), a question which was also raised by Danuta Hübner (EPP, Poland). “If we wish to succeed, as most of us do, this will be possible only if the adequate conditions are met”, the Dutch MEP argued. In particular, she feels that once the EDIS system is in place, no member state should find itself in a less favourable position than in the absence of the 'deposit guarantee' pillar of Banking Union. The rapporteur is to submit a working document in early May.
Bernd Lucke (ECR, Germany), who opposes the completion of Banking Union, spoke of a “moral hazard” and the “perverse incentives” which would be caused by the EDIS, by promoting excessive risk-taking as soon as the certain guarantee of a bail-out from Europe is in place. “The arguments in favour of EDIS are anything but convincing”, he said. Less categorically, his fellow ECR member, Sander Loones of Belgium, said that the work on reducing financial risks is “essential”. “To reduce the risk, you have to share it”, said Gerolf Annemans (ENL, Belgium), stressing that there is a “very deep North-South divide” over the pooling of the risks linked to the bank deposit guarantees.
On the same day, the German banking industry held an event at the Brussels office of the Land of Nordrhein-Westfalen, at which the EDIS proposal came under fire. As well as the “political arguments”, the legal base” of the text was also called into question, according to one source. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)
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