|
|
It's the latest Brussels bubble whodunnit: Which country wielded the knife against the EU's half-formed banking union this time?
As the collapse of U.S. lender Silicon Valley Bank again shines a light on the fragility of the world's financial system, speculation grows within the EU’s corridors of power about who or what prompted the European Commission — at the last minute — to pull a controversial piece of banking legislation.
The plan for tighter rules on bank bailouts mysteriously dropped off the Commission's agenda for last week, and it's now expected to be M.I.A. for at least a month. Or even longer.
And there couldn't have been a worse time for Europe's banking union plan to suffer another flesh wound.
The decision to delay came ahead of the collapse of SVB, which had $209 billion in assets — requiring a U.S. government backstop for all depositors and exposing gaps in the framework for handling failing banks.
While SVB's business model was relatively unusual, and heavily dependent on the tech industry, the bank was a mid-sized lender in the bigger U.S. market.
The on-hold EU rules are aimed at stopping a middle layer of banks from receiving public money in a crisis, and the U.S. decision to rescue all SVB depositors will raise questions about whether Europe's framework could do the same to stop a bank run.
There are plenty of countries with a motive to delay the latest EU proposal. Plenty of other protagonists too. At POLITICO we’ve donned our fedora to investigate the most likely list of suspects, as officials and diplomats point fingers at each other behind the scenes...
more at POLITICO