http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18409175
A single regulator to oversee banks across all 27 European Union states could be in place as early as 2013 according to the European Commission.

A controversial new bank bailout fund financed by a tax on financial institutions is also planned.

The proposal includes an EU-wide deposit guarantee scheme to protect savers in the event of a bank collapse.

Under a banking union, would we see savings flooding into the peripheral banks (such as ours) that are capital-starved and offering 3 or 4% interest, in contrast with the German banks that are offering sod-all?

Germany's central bank has shot down EU proposals for a European banking union, warning categorically that eurozone liabilities cannot be shared without a fundamental shift towards fiscal and political union.

The Bundesbank has already hsot it down.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... union.html

Fiscal and political unions are a no no.

why?
The choice will be simple sign up or f off out of the euro.
All Europe too vote on one day

The Bundesbank has already hsot it down.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... union.html

Fiscal and political unions are a no no.

For start the German courts would have none of it.

It would require extensive changes to existing treaties and referenda across the EU.

It would take years in the planning, years we don't have.

This weekend’s Economist magazine cover showed the global economy as a sinking ship and beseeches Ms Merkel to “start the engines”. The magazine summarises an international “consensus on what Ms Merkel must do”, including “shifting from austerity”, “a banking union with euro-wide deposit insurance” and a “limited form of debt mutualisation”. Privately, world leaders from London to Washington and Rome are urging similar actions on Berlin.

The demands being made of the German government spring from a sincere desire to avoid a rerun of the 1930s, when economic disaster provoked political catastrophe.

However, while these demands may make economic sense, they are politically unrealistic and dangerous. They are textbook solutions that fail the real-world test. Worse, if enacted, they would risk provoking the very political radicalisation they are ultimately meant to prevent.

Consider just one of the proposals on the shopping list: a Europe-wide bank deposit insurance scheme. As a senior Dutch politician who shares the German view, puts it: “We cannot push through a banking union when the French have just cut their retirement age to 60 and we have raised ours to 67.” From the Dutch and German point of view, it is unfair for their citizens to underwrite the banks of countries using their own money to pay social benefits that are more generous than those on offer in Germany or the Netherlands.

This dilemma illustrates why a relatively technical-sounding exercise such as bank-deposit insurance has profound implications for national sovereignty. Once you take a big step towards the mutualisation of debt across Europe, you are forced towards much deeper political union. It is not just the much-discussed need for a European “minister of finance”, with the power to override national governments. To avoid bitter disputes over fairness, you would also need to harmonise European social-security systems. That would be the work of decades.

My reading of the article is very different. If you leave out Ambrose Evans-Pritchard editorialising of reality, the Germans are saying no to the banking union without a "proper" fiscal union, and with a further political union on the horizon. It's what the Germans call "more Europe" (along with other members of different political establishments in Europe, especially the Spaniards in the last week) as the solution to the current problems in the Eurozone, not "less Europe"

What they get wrong again in this article (along with the one from the BBC in this thread) is the fact that the banking union, the fiscal union, the political union, the "more Europe"...... refers to the Eurozone, NOT the EU. Therefore the concept of "two Europes" with two different levels of integration is back to life.

You are right about the German Courts, but the main point in this particular regard is the willingness of the German establishment to make meaningful structural changes in the Eurozone, using the "proper" channels, Bundestag and referendum if necessary.

As for the time required to implement those changes, remember the Fiscal Compact took just few months...... I wouldn't be surprise if we have another referendum this Autumn in the Eurozone

Good article on German objections here:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bfc6959c ... z1xT66B4D5

I think it's behind a paywall, in which case here's a flavour ...

Oh well, there's always Anschluss...