EU needs banking union

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EU needs banking union

The eurozone needs to push ahead with its financial sector reform plans and create a centrally managed and funded body to handle troubled banks, a European Central Bank policymaker said on Friday.

By Valentina Za And Silvia Aloisi (Reuters)

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Published: Sat 26 May 2012, 11:51 PM

Last updated: Tue 7 Apr 2015, 12:25 PM

“Europe needs to move towards a ‘financial union’, with a single euro area authority responsible for the supervision and resolution of large and complex cross-border banks,” ECB executive board member Peter Praet said.

“Decisive and far-sighted reforms like these, unrealistic until a short while ago, are now gaining support. Reacting to the pressure of events may seem unattractive, but it may also be the only way forward,” he said in the text of a speech prepared for a financial conference in Milan.

Praet told the conference that there was “no escaping a banking union” and that a resolution framework was an essential part of a single market. The European Commission will present a proposal in early June to wind up banks when they hit trouble. The current crisis meant that deleveraging by banks — which curtails credit provided to companies and consumers — could not be avoided, but liquidity provided by central banks could to some extent ease the process, said Praet, who oversees the ECB’s economics department.

The ECB has given banks €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) into cheap loans which have been widely credited with helping troubled debtor states meet substantial portions of their 2012 funding needs early in the year, by encouraging banks to buy government bonds, as well as keeping the banks liquid as they manage bad debts. “The idea is of smoothing the unavoidable process of deleveraging to avoid the negative externalities of (bank) fire sales of assets,” Praet said.


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