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Petr Nečas, the Czech prime minister, has said that his country is prepared to block the creation of a single supervisory system for the European Union's banking sector. Nečas, who described this European Council as being devoted to “procedures and timelines” rather than to the substance of the supervisory mechanism, said there are a “lot of discrete points where clarity is lacking” and that the Czech Republic believes must be cleared up before he is prepared to sign up to a single supervisory mechanism. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, he said, adding: “We are ready to reject the introduction of a single supervisory mechanism".
He made clear the country's political calculation and why “it is in our great interest to have a sense of the entirety” of the new banking regime. Approval of “particular mechanisms” would be the country's sole opportunity to guarantee the country's interests, he said, as subsequent, ostensibly more technical decisions would require the support only of a qualified majority of votes in the EU's Council of Ministers.
He nonetheless emphasised that the Czech Republic has support from a range of countries, most particularly from Sweden and Denmark, which he described as having “similar or identical positions”, but also often the Netherlands. Other countries – including Poland and Luxembourg – share its position on individual issues.