What will proposals for a fiscal and banking union mean for the Eurozone and the UK?

Ahead of this week’s EU summit, Open Europe has published a briefing note summarising the various ideas floated for a fiscal and banking union in the wake of the eurozone crisis, analysing their potential impact on the UK and the eurozone. Given the embryonic nature of many of the ideas, Open Europe concludes that none constitutes a realistic short-term, or even medium-term, solution to the crisis. In particular, Germany’s insistence on an effective veto over other member states’ spending over a certain level as a precondition for fiscal burden sharing is itself a huge political obstacle that may not be overcome anytime soon.

The briefing also notes that it’s virtually impossible to separate a fiscal union from a banking union, as they are interdependent. Open Europe estimates that, taken together, an EU bank resolution fund and deposit guarantee scheme will need to be worth at least €600bn to be credible, with a direct credit line to either ECB or national treasuries. However, in a crisis situation, this amount could be far higher. Since 2008, for example, the EU has approved €4.5 trillion in national state aid to financial institutions in Europe – an EU banking resolution fund must be prepared to inject similar amounts. This fund could initially be built upon the existing ESM framework, although it would require a substantial rewriting of the ESM treaty and a large increase in its lending capacity.

We’d note that a banking union in the eurozone does come with merits, but it is effectively a fiscal union via the backdoor given that eurozone governments will ultimately have to jointly stand behind all the banks in currency union. Therefore, there is a very real risk of banks in one country free-riding off the backs of taxpayers in another is therefore huge and the Germans are absolutely right in insisting on fiscal safeguards to avoid this happening. But this is also why banking union, even in an optimistic scenario, is years away.

For better or worse, a banking union will inevitably have an impact on the UK’s place in Europe and add pressure on the Coalition to seek safeguards ensuring that a more integrated Eurozone is compatible with the UK’s economic and political interests. A key question for the UK is whether it really wants the ECB tasked with supervising a banking union in which cannot take part itself, and how to avoid barriers to financial trade in the Eurozone for UK firms if this happens.

For the full report see here.