It is by no means a coincidence that the proposed reform of the EU institutions, disclosed by the German Finance Minister last Tuesday, contains no trace of the banking union. While the President of the Commission and the President of the European Council, pressed by France and Spain, insist that as early as next year a common deposit insurance and the capillary control of the ECB over the European banking system can come into force, in Germany - as indeed also in the Netherlands - there is still no unanimity of views on what aspect this Bank union.
In particular, the parties of the majority are holding back. The Union CDU / CSU she seems irritated by the acceleration impressed by Brussels. Indeed, for the Christian Democrats, the independence of the ECB and the principle of subsidiarity must be guaranteed. Not to mention that common deposit insurance, states the note issued by Michael Meister and Klaus-Peter Flosbach, would further complicate the path towards the creation of the supervisory authority; at most, one could think of a harmonization of national rules on deposit insurance. In other words, the Chancellor's party fears that common deposit insurance is being used as a Trojan horse to bail out southern European banks with the money of German savers. In a motion for a parliamentary resolution dated 25 September, the parliamentary groups of the majority chose even clearer words to reject the proposals of Barroso and Van Rompuy: «The final decision on monetary policy and supervision cannot rest with the institution itself».
Concerns are also shared by liberal allies. FDP deputy Frank Schäffler, unconvinced of the urgency of approving the plan to give the Eurotower supervisory powers by regulation, asked the Research Department of the Bundestag. And the response leaves no room for many doubts: without the involvement of the two houses of Parliament, Brussels cannot deprive the German BaFin of powers and attribute them to the ECB. This means that, if this opinion is taken into account by the Federal Government, the Commission will have to review its plans, drawing up a proposal for a directive rather than a regulation. The latter, in fact, is an act that is immediately effective in the Member States, without the need for each national Parliament to implement it. In the case of the directive, however, it is up to the individual states, with a certain margin of discretion as to the methods, to implement the act. It is obvious that if the Commission's proposal for a regulation of 12 September becomes waste paper, it is, to say the least, unthinkable to believe that the banking union can already see the light of day at the beginning of the new year. We are now talking about mid-2013.
