The green light for the new one has been postponed to next Friday Spanish banking reformoriginally scheduled for today. The provision is necessary to honor the agreements that Madrid signed in July with Europe. “We have prepared a decree law, but the Commission has asked for an extra week to analyze it together.
We have accepted this request and the decree will be approved next Friday,” explained the spokeswoman for Madrid, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.
The goal of the Iberian country is to obtain the 100 billion in international aid that Brussels has allocated to support Spanish institutions in crisis due to toxic securities linked to the real estate bubble.
Among other things, the reform envisages the attribution to Frob (the state restructuring fund) and to the Central Bank of broad powers on the restructuring and recovery of credit institutions. The Frob will therefore have to manage the creation of a "bad bank" in a subsequent phase. Experts from the Troika (IMF, EU and ECB) are in Madrid today to discuss this instrument in particular, which could be entrusted with the 'toxic' assets (especially real estate) of institutions in the greatest difficulty.
On the social front, however, The Spanish government today extended by six months the monthly subsidy of 400 euros for the unemployed, expiring on August 15th. The subsidy for the unemployed with at least two dependents will go from 400 to 450 euros, but the conditions for obtaining it will be stricter. ”People without resources must not find themselves without support from the state,” said Saenz de Santamaria.
The spokeswoman then denied the existence of negotiations for a global rescue of the Spanish economy, in addition to the one already concluded for aid to the banking sector. But, according to European sources, there are no formal negotiations just because Madrid has not yet submitted any applications. The hypothesis of aid – which according to Fitch would not imply any downgrade on the Spanish debt – would however be in the “evaluation” phase, pending a possible announcement as early as September.
