An impasse over plans for the European Central Bank to supervise banks, the European Union’s most ambitious financial reform, takes centre stage at a finance ministers’ meeting on Wednesday. France and Germany, traditionally leaders in such integrationist moves, are at loggerheads over parts of the plan, and there is little time left for the EU to meet a commitment to complete the framework for banking union by the end of the year.
Critical questions remain unanswered, such as how many banks the ECB should directly supervise and whether the central bank gets longer than one year, as planned, to fully take on its role.
After three years of piecemeal crisis-fighting measures, agreeing on a banking union would lay a cornerstone of wider economic union and mark the first concerted attempt to integrate the bloc’s response to problem lenders.
