Dagens Nyheter has yesterday:
Quote:
Anders Borg [Swedish Finance Minister]
is more optimistic about the prospects of reaching an agreement about
the controversial EU Bank Union at today’s [yesterdays] finance minister
summit. The Swedish demand for a change of the EU constitution to give
non-Euro countries the same treatment has gained support.
– We are starting to see the components for a compromise, Finance Minister Borg said on his way to the meeting.
– But Sweden
has a very clear position. We will not accept a solution in which we
get second class members in this authority. Everybody must get the same
treatment and this is a hard demand from our side.
Anders Borg pointed out
that the EU-commission in a new report also says it will need a change
of the EU-treaty to insure the non-Euro countries a position in a
European Bank Inspection under the ECB.
– The Commission says in the blueprint that it will create a firewall between the monetary policy and the inspection of the banks
as the Germans demand, and if you also create equality between the
countries, then a change of the treaty is the most reasonable
alternative. Obviously the Commission has made the same legal analysis
as we have.
– Much talks pro a simplified change of
the treaty. Paragraph 127 is already in the treaty. This is not a
question of transferral of sovereignty, as it already was in the former
change of the treaty, says Anders Borg.
He thinks such a change would take 18-24
months to complete, when it must be ratified by the parliaments of all
EU-countries. It probably will mean that Sweden does not join the Bank
Union before this constitutional change has been made.
Comment:
We now know that the meeting was postponed a week, and here we see why.
The stumbling block is clearly Sweden
demanding a change of the treaty, and in the worst cases this will mean a
delay of 18-24 months. Treaty changes are almost as difficult to get
through parliaments as through the Congress in the USA.
This is known as a spanner in the works.
Equal treatment will mean that Finland,
which is a Euro-zone member, will take second place to Sweden in
practice, as Finland’s two largest banks (Nordea and SEB) are Swedish.
Thus, the Swedish state owned bank. Nordea Bank AB (STO:NDA-SEK), and
the Swedish state would be on opposite sides of the Finnish table –
there was a reason for the disgruntled expression on the Finnish Finance
Minister.
The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble must have had a fit – tampering with the German currency?