Hands down! The object is implied and they are German savings banks and cooperative banks. This is the title of a editorial by Oliver Stock appeared in recent days on the online version of the business newspaper Handelsblatt. The German political-economic establishment is in fact alarmed by the rumors, according to which the European Commission is reportedly preparing a proposal for a regulation to change the current framework of European supervision. The goal would be to entrust the ECB with capillary control over the entire European banking system starting from 2013. Originally there was talk of a new European supervision for the twenty-five largest banking groups, with branches in several member states. Now the Commission is apparently thinking of widening the circle. And the German reaction was not long in coming. According to Stock, the ECB is already sufficiently engaged in trying to maintain price stability and it would therefore not be wise to entrust it with the additional task of supervising the banking sector; a task for which it was not created and which would indeed compromise its independence. At best, it can be talked about after the crisis is over, Stock says, not now.
Opinions shared by a large part of the German political class, which fears a weakening of the functions of BaFin, the agency that depends on the Ministry of Finance, which, with the Bundesbank, shares the task of controlling the German banking system. For Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary group leader of the CDU in the Bundestag, «there is no need to transfer the supervision of non-systemic banks or banks with non-cross-border activities to the European level». According to Meister, together with the proposal for a regulation on banking supervision, Brussels should also present a project to subject European banks to insolvency proceedings; the latter question has now become taboo in the upper floors of the Chancellery, but which for several German deputies is of central importance. In recent days Frank Schäffler, a Liberal MP fighting bailout policies, has published an article on Project-Syndicate, pointing the way to subjecting the banking system to bankruptcy. Schäffler himself was among the first parliamentarians to express himself negatively on the pending Commission proposal: «We have fallen into the trap again; – he told the Handelsblatt – limiting the banking union only to the big banks is something on which Germany will not be able to impose itself, given that it will not be of any help to the Spanish savings banks». In short, according to Schäffler, the banking union will be made in function of the Spanish banks and will be a way to redistribute savers' money from one end of Europe to the other.
The president of the German savings bank group and former Bavarian finance minister is also perplexed Georg Fahrenschon: "It is neither necessary nor realistic for the ECB to control 8400 institutions across Europe". The opinion of Gerhard Hoffmann of the people's banks group is not very different, according to which "the national authorities are better qualified to carry out this task". The thinking of the private banks went against the tide, as at the end of June they said they were against the hypothesis which Mrs. Merkel had given the go-ahead. According to a document from the trade association (Bundesverband deutscher Banken), made public by Reuters and Handelsblatt on Tuesday, German private banks would be in favor of a transfer of all supervisory powers to Frankfurt. BaFin and the Bundesbank would only be activated on the initiative of the ECB. However, the document also highlights some critical points of the project, given that it is not yet clear how the Eurotower will be able to make its sanctions binding, nor how the credit institutions will be able to defend themselves against decisions they do not deem adequate. The answers in the fall.
