Economic governance

3 designs for banking union (and the turf war ahead)

June 12, 2012 3:26 pm by Alex Barker

Planning for a European banking union is racing ahead, in spite of the considerable political obstacles. The vision is for two, five or even ten years in the future. But be in no doubt: the institutional turf war is already afoot.

It was on display today in the pages of the international press. Speaking to the FT Jose Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, laid out his vision of a banking union built on the foundations of existing EU institutions.

At the same time Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, made his pitch in the Wall Street Journal for eurozone central banks to provide “the backbone of the financial union”.

The clashing views highlight the great unanswered question of the banking union: if power over banks is centralised, who will be given control? Cui bono? These three scenarios lay down the broad templates for a union, and the institutions that would stand to win and lose depending on the outcome.

1. An EU banking union

Broadly as outlined by Barroso. A single supervisor, resolution regime and deposit guarantee fund serving all 27 member states. Should the UK refuse to take part — which it will — arrangements would be found to enable the other members to go forward. This union would cover countries outside and inside the single currency club, but remain within an EU framework.

Treaty change would not be necessary, at least according to the commission. Read more

Posted in Economic governance, EU, EU Commission, Euro, Financial services |

Ten things to remember about a banking union

June 6, 2012 1:45 pm by Alex Barker

Some issues to bear in mind when considering whether a European banking union is a realistic possibility. The difficulties highlighted are not impossible to overcome. But it would be a wrench.

1. Germans don’t like strong EU supervision of their banks. Berlin is fond of federal EU solutions. But it is even more keen on running its own banks. The political links — especially between the state and regional savings banks — are particularly strong in Germany. To date Berlin has proved one of the biggest opponents of giving serious clout to existing pan-EU regulators.

2. Germans really don’t like strong EU supervision of their banks. There is again some wishful thinking about Berlin shifting position. Angela Merkel did say she supported EU supervision. But there were important caveats. She referred to supervision of “systemically important banks” — which is likely to exclude the smaller Sparkassen banks and the 8 Landesbanks. To some analysts, this represents a giant loophole. She also did not explain what kind of supervision. Berlin may only support tweaks to the current system.

3. Germans don’t like underwriting foreign bank deposits. Another pillar of a banking union is common deposit insurance. To Berlin this proposal represents another ingenious scheme to pick the pocket of German taxpayers. A weaker proposal to force national deposit guarantee schemes to lend to each other in emergencies has been stuck for two years in the Brussels legislative pipeline. Most countries opposed it. German ministers say it could be considered, once there is a fiscal union across the eurozone. So don’t wait around.

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Posted in Economic governance, EU, Euro, Financial services |

Hollande: Friend of the City?

May 8, 2012 4:02 pm by Alex Barker

Francois Hollande rather enjoys issuing blood-curdling warnings to the City of London. During the campaign he declared his “real enemy” to be ”the world of finance” and post-election he is not toning down the rhetoric.

How ironic then that Hollande’s first major piece of EU financial regulation will see him largely siding with European banks (and yes, that includes the British ones) against calls from the UK and ECB for tougher rules.

Diplomacy in Brussels can be a funny business. Hard as it is to believe, in this negotiation the big beasts of City banking have been privately cheering on the French. Next week, when finance ministers meet to negotiate a deal, we’ll all be able to see if Hollande changes Paris’ tune. Read more

Posted in Economic governance, EU, Financial services |

Geithner to EU: Increase your bailout fund

March 20, 2012 10:49 am by Peter Spiegel

US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner

Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, has occasionally irked his European counterparts with attempts to influence the eurozone’s crisis policymaking, but European officials will be closely listening to him as the clock ticks down to next month’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund.

European Union leaders hope to get non-eurozone backing to double the IMF’s funding to $1tn at the gathering. Although the US won’t contribute, Washington is the IMF’s largest shareholder and is widely believed to be behind the insistence of Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief, that no increase will be forthcoming unless the eurozone increases the size of its own €500bn rescue system.

Those interested in tea leaf reading will get their chance today, when Geithner testifies on Capital Hill on the eurozone crisis. The House financial services committee, where Geithner will appear, helpfully released his testimony last night, and it makes clear Geithner is in no mood to back down. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, Economic growth, EU, Euro |
From The World February 21, 2012

Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the eurozone crisis.

After more than 13 hours of talks, a second bail-out for Greece was agreed early on Tuesday morning. We’ll be bringing you reaction to the deal throughout the day. All times are GMT. By John Aglionby and Tom Burgis on the news desk in London.

15.45: Stanley Pignal, of our Brussels bureau, on how Jean-Claude Juncker  tries to keep the mood jolly with a rolled up FT.

Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of Eurogroup, used a lethal weapon to slap Swedish fin min Anders Borg: a rolled up #FT. http://t.co/lqu1jea5 #EU 

about 1 hour ago via web Reply Retweet Favorite
@spignal 

Stanley Pignal

15.30: FT video with Martin Wolf and John Authers looks at whether the package can possibly work, while Lex writers ask anyone would invest in Greece.

15.17: Markets update – they’re still in negative territory, reports Stephen Smith, of the FT’s markets team.

 Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU |

An awkward start to Denmark’s EU presidency

January 12, 2012 12:27 pm by Peter Spiegel

Barroso, left, at Thursday's news conference with Denmark's Thorning-Schmidt in Copenhagen

A good chunk of the Brussels press corps has been in Copenhagen this week for the formal kick-off of Denmark’s turn at the EU’s 6-month rotating presidency. Days of back-to-back ministerial briefings and ceremonial events have focused intensively on the Danish government’s “green growth” agenda – down to the green skirt-clad Danish National Girls Choir performing “Plant a Tree” at a concert attended by EU bigwigs Wednesday night.

But when it came to today’s official handoff of the EU reins to Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, there was a slight hiccup: Denmark’s Vestas, the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, chose the same day to announce it was cutting 2,335 jobs – most of them in its home country. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, Environment, EU |

[UPDATED] New EU treaty: leaked Corsepius letter

December 15, 2011 2:17 pm by Peter Spiegel

Uwe Corsepius, EU Council's secretary general

UPDATE: According to a British official, the UK has today been invited to participate in the treaty negotiations, a significant shift that will allow London to weigh in on some of the most sensitive issues to be discussed, including whether EU institutions will enforce the new pact.

Senior officials from European national finance ministries chatted last night in the first informal negotiations on the highly-touted new intergovernmental treaty to govern the region’s economic policy, though diplomats say little substance was discussed.

Ahead of the talks, however, Uwe Corsepius, the new secretary general of the European Council, sent out a four-page letter to negotiators in an attempt to set a roadmap for how the talks will proceed – and we at Brussels Blog got our mitts on it.

Significantly, Corsepius writes that he wants negotiations completed by the end of January “so as to allow the signature of the agreement at the beginning of March”. Officials said this is why a new informal EU summit is tentatively scheduled for early February. A first draft of the treaty text could be done by tomorrow, or early next week at the latest. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU, Fiscal policy |

EU treaty problems? Cameron is not alone.

December 14, 2011 11:51 am by Peter Spiegel

Finland's Jyrki Katainen, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany's Angela Merkel and EU Commission's José Manuel Barroso at last week's summit.

This morning, we are fronting our newspaper with a story led by fellow Brussels Blogger Joshua Chaffin about the growing problems in multiple European capitals — not just London — with the nascent  economic convergence treaty agreed to at last week’s summit.

That story was written with a lot of help from our network of correspondents across Europe, and given space constraints in the dead-tree version of our report, we weren’t able to go into all the detailed accounts we got from our FT colleagues. Here on the blog, we thought we’d provide a more in-depth taste of the potential hiccups ahead. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU, Fiscal policy |

EU summit: The leaked Van Rompuy report

December 7, 2011 11:43 am by Peter Spiegel

Herman Van Rompuy, left, with President Barack Obama at last week's EU-US summit.

Fellow Brussels Blogger Josh Chaffin has a scoop in this morning’s paper on the five-page “interim report” on EU treaty changes for this week’s summit written by Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, which we were able to get our hands on yesterday.

Our story focuses on what is likely to be the central element debated about the report – the suddenly fashionable proposal to do a quick-and-dirty, limited treaty change through the hitherto obscure Protocol 12 of the EU treaties, which is described on page 3 of the Van Rompuy document, which Brussels Blog loyalists can read here.

But there’s much more to digest in the report, and as is our practice, we thought we’d give a more extended evaluation here on the Blog. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU |

[UPDATED] A sign the big summit could fall short?

October 25, 2011 1:09 pm by Peter Spiegel

Juncker, left, heads Eurogroup of 17 euro finance ministers. Rostowski, right, the Ecofin of all 27.

UPDATE 2: The Polish presidency has just made the official announcement. They say the cancellation allows heads of government to decide the things finance ministers were originally going to tackle. Despite negative market reaction to the news, several EU diplomats insist this is a diplomatic miscue by the Poles rather than a sign of things to come.

UPDATE: European diplomat confirms meeting of 27 EU finance ministers has been cancelled.

It’s getting uncomfortably close to crunch time for eurozone leaders, with just over 24 hours left before the summit-to-end-all-summits. But will they actually be able to agree on the big euro rescue plan? A letter sent last night by Jacek Rostowski, the Polish finance minister, makes it seem doubtful.

Since Poland currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, Rostowski is charged with convening a meeting of all 27 EU finance ministers tomorrow ahead of the big summit to lay the groundwork for a final agreement.

But officials tell Brussels Blog the so-called “Ecofin” council meeting is now likely off, and in a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who chairs the group of 17 eurozone finance ministers, Rostowski makes it appear the cancellation is due to a failure to agree on outstanding issues. Read more

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Posted in Economic governance, EU, Euro, Fiscal policy |
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