BANK SEPARATION. Commissioner Barnier, Head of the Commission’s DG Internal Market, announced last week that he will push on with making the proposals in the Liikanen report on separating banks’ retail and trading parts a reality.

Through a spokesperson, the Commissioner told the press that a proposal following the conclusions in the report is due to be published in Autumn 2013.

Criticism towards the Liikanen report has been massive, with banks and other stakeholders arguing that a separation is not necessarily a cure for future crises. NFU has said that while we support a level playing field for banks, the consequences of a separation must be carefully analysed – in general as well as for the employees.

The background for the Liikanen report is that many banks in the EU are “too big to fail”, i.e. no state can allow them to go down because of what this would mean for the real economy. As a consequence, the banks can take risks backed up by state guarantees, in essence tax-payers’ money. By separating the trading part, this would no longer be able to grow on the basis of government backing.