Germany ready to compromise over Eurozone banking union
GERMAN finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has signalled a readiness to compromise on the European Union’s planned banking union, German media reported yesterday.
“We are working intensely to get the legal framework for a banking supervisor settled before Christmas,” Schaeuble told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, in an interview published yesterday.
Spiegel magazine reported that Schaeuble was prepared to seek a compromise with France by suggesting the supervisory body could be domiciled in Paris, rather than at the ECB’s headquarters in Frankfurt.
His remarks came as top German central banker Jens Weidmann criticised the new Greek debt deal which will see the countries that bailed out the struggling government charge a lower rate of interest on the rescue loans and wait an extra 15 years to be paid back. In an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper he also said: “If it was down to the Bundesbank then [the ECB] wouldn’t have bought any Eurozone debt”.