The nutty plans for a eurozone banking union trundle on, albeit at a slow and grudging pace and–well done them–without the participation of the Brits, the Czechs and (now) the Swedes. Over at Rzeczpospolita, Open Europe’s Pawel Swidlicki takes a look at what membership of this nightmare club might involve for Poland:
“…since 2008, EU states have in total offered around €4.7 trillion in guarantees, capital, liquidity and asset relief measures to the European banking sector. Under an illustrative scenario, were a joint resolution fund been in place during the crisis (we assume the bailed out countries would have been unable to participate) the Polish state would have had to stump up over €200bn – 74% of its GDP – whereas in reality it only had to put up €9bn. These figures are clearly purely illustrative but they highlight that such a burden sharing arrangement – based roughly on each state’s GDP and population size – would be hugely iniquitous given that Polish banks only hold 0.73% of EU wide bank assets. It should not be forgotten that this is the clear and stated, but also necessary (if it is to offer any solution to the crisis), end goal of the banking union.”
That the Polish government is still going along with these plans is yet more evidence of the extent to which it is currently in the grip of the eurofederalist obsession. What a shame. It is to be hoped that Polish voters are paying attention.
Meanwhile in Spain, the consequences of the single currency fester on:
(Reuters) – Spanish banks’ bad loans rose to 11.2 percent of their outstanding portfolios in October, reaching a fresh record high, Bank of Spain data showed on Tuesday. Loans that fell into arrears increased by 7.4 billion euros ($9.7 billion) from September, reaching 189.6 billion euros in October. The rate was up from 10.7 percent in September. Non-performing loans on the books of the country’s crippled banks have risen steadily since a decade-long property boom ended four years ago, with the country now in its second recession since 2009 and one in four Spaniards out of work.