The agreement on the banks has not arrived. At the end of an interminable meeting of theEcofin, the EU economy and finance ministers have not been able to find a satisfactory compromise on the new capital requirements for banks foreseen by Basel 3. All postponed to May 15th, when a new Ecofin meeting will be held in Brussels.
The points of divergence have not been overcome: on the one hand there are those who continue to want – France and Germany in the head – that i parameters for credit institutions are the same for everyone, in a European harmonization that sees, as requested by the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a European Banking Authority (EBA) with more supervisory powers. On the other Great Britain and Sweden – supported by Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Slovakia – they would like stricter rules but to be left to the discretion of the States in their application.
Another object of contention is the so-called "buffer", the additional capital buffer. The Basel 3 rules would like it to be 2,5%, Great Britain and Sweden would like to bring it to 5%, while the Danish presidency has proposed a compromise threshold of 3%, on which all the countries aligned with France and Germany, including Italy.
Eventually she got out a draft agreement which will have to be re-discussed – and signed – in two weeks. "We have an agreement," Margrethe Vestager, Danish finance minister and current EU president, finally said. It now remains "a technical check on the last points".
