European Union finance ministers agreed on Thursday, December 13, the first step towards a eurozone banking union: they assigned the role of bank supervision to the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB will oversee banks in the eurozone whose assets exceed €30 billion, or 20 percent of a country’s GDP, as well as those banks that the eurozone members have had to intervene to prop up.
The ECB will gather the relevant expertise from July 2013 in an initial phase, and full oversight will begin by March 2014, the Sme daily wrote. In Slovakia, the ECB will oversee banks that belong to multinational groups: Slovenská Sporiteľňa, Tatra Banka, VÚB and ČSOB. Smaller banks will remain under the remit of the Slovak central bank, the NBS. The NBS will cooperate with the ECB when overseeing the main banks in the country, and will also participate in decision-making, state secretary (i.e. deputy minister) at the Finance Ministry Vazil Hudák told Sme. The control mechanism will not include Volksbank, whose parent company – Russia's Sberbank – is based outside the EU.
Source: Sme
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
