Megan E Greene, Columnist

How to Kill a Banking Union the German Way

Germany's insistence on EU treaty change to create a banking union is an attempt to block banking union, using the oldest trick in the playbook of EU bureaucracy.
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The most effective way to block any measure in the European Union is to say it requires a treaty change. This is the sucker punch German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble delivered at an April 13 meeting with his EU counterparts in Dublin.

According to Schaeuble, the EU can't make more progress towards setting up a banking union within the existing EU treaties. Germany says that a treaty change is needed to properly separate the banking supervision and monetary policy sides of the European Central Bank, once the ECB takes over supervisory duties for all 17 euro area countries.