Alarm for the consequences of the new capital requirements required of banks: the Senate will ask for guidance from the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the Bank of Italy, as well as from Monti in his capacity as Minister of the Economy. The problem was raised in the Finance commission of Palazzo Madama. Concerns arise - as Senator Maria Leddi, of the Democratic Party underlined - precisely from the new parameters defined by the EBA, on the basis of which Italian banks will be forced to approve substantial increases in share capital by the deadline of 30 June next, for a total of 14,8 billion euros: "It is evident that the need to find such enormous liquidity will put the banking system as a whole in difficulty, making it easily contestable by foreign subjects".
We also need to consider "the dramatic repercussions on the real economy, since everyone knows the dependence of productive activities on bank support". Hence the need - argues the senator of the Democratic Party - for the Finance Commission to ask questions about the nature, political or technical, of the reasons that support the work of the EBA. The remarks of the president of the commission, Mario Baldassarri, echo her: “Considering the negative effects of these recapitalization interventions on Italian banks. In fact, not only is there a risk of the takeover of credit institutions by foreign subjects, but also that they are forced to proceed with an early repayment of the credit lines granted to businesses and households".
Baldassarri recalls having raised the question in the recent hearing of the European commissioner for the internal market and services, Michel Barnier, and having received "an unsatisfactory response". And for the PDL, Senator Anna Bonfrisco does not fail to recall how the president of Consob, Giuseppe Vegas, had already highlighted the risks and negative effects deriving from the massive recapitalization interventions made necessary by the new European parameters and had also emphasized the question of the intervention powers of the EBA, as a body of a purely technical nature.
“Evidently – notes Bonfrisco – the interests of the Italian banking system have not been adequately represented and defended in the context of the work of the European Banking Authority”. Unanimous and transversal concerns, therefore, which led the commission to proceed with the hearings of the Bank of Italy and the EBA, as Authority for the supervision of the banking sector at national and European level, and of the Minister of Economy and Finance, " as a political representative of Italy's interests”.
