A few days ago the news broke that the German public bank LLBW (Landeskreditbank Baden Württemberg), with assets exceeding 30 billion euros, had its request not to be subject to the supervision of the European Central Bank rejected by the European Court of Justice , but to that of the Bundesbank, on the grounds that its risk of insolvency appears to be extremely limited.
This request is only the latest act in a series of interventions which have seen the entire German policy in defense of the independence and autonomy of the banks at the forefront, starting with the attempt to keep the their regional savings banks, the sparkasse. Added to this is the different weight attributed to NPLs and derivatives by the European authorities, with effects, as regards the need for recapitalization, which tend to penalize Italian credit institutions, where the weight of loans to the real economy is greater, to the detriment of those institutions, above all in northern Europe, where instead the use of derivative contracts is current and free from penalties (an example above all is the case of Deutsche Bank). Lastly, without counting the position taken by Germany in the European institutions, increasingly inclined to change article 2 of the directive on capital requirements, which today allows exceptions only for large national institutions such as the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti in Italy and the its counterparts in other countries, and which the Germans would instead like to extend to their regional banks.
A stubbornness and insistence, the German one to leave as much margin as possible of autonomy and breathing space to its banking system, which can at times seem grotesque if one takes into consideration the last piece of this mosaic, namely the wish from Andreas Dombret , vice president of the Bundesbank, that the officials of the ECB and of the other European supervisory authorities who wish to check the health of banks in Germany have a thorough knowledge of the German language, and thus allow their banks to best represent what is their financial situation, thus avoiding “misunderstandings” or, to put it in German, as the English language is officially falling out of favor after Brexit, “missverständnisse”.
The sentence of the European Court of Justice can therefore only be welcomed because it reiterates for once that the rules we have decided to equip ourselves with in the European context practically sight unseen and without any negotiating cue, whether they are fair or not, must in any case be respected by all and not intermittently according to the conveniences of the moment.
Perhaps, if there is one lesson that our country should draw from all this, it is to see how in other realities and other contexts everything is being done to preserve the structural peculiarities and biodiversity of its banking system, in the awareness that these prerogatives still represent its strength and solidity today. Reducing the degree of biodiversity and opening one's market to foreign subjects, without acquiring a good dose of antibodies, is fatal not only for the very stability of the national banking system but also for economic development and the real economy; considerations, these, that a policy attentive to the country and with a minimum vision of the future should have well in front of its eyes.
* The author is the General Secretary of Assopopolari
