Eurogroup chairman and Dutch fin min speaking yesterday.
Bloomberg reporting.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem has rejected calls for banking union regulations to be loosened after weeks of falling bank shares, saying new European bail-in rules had caused investors to look "more critically" at risks born by banks.
Speaking on Dutch radio he said stricter rules imposed in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis would restore confidence in banks.
"We now have much stricter rules for who pays the bill if banks go wrong, and it's not the taxpayer. For that reason, investors are looking much more critically at banks, and that is leading to a correction on equity markets."
"We must first make the banking union stronger in my view. "Capital requirements should go up further in coming years. That would strengthen confidence in banks."
Dijsselbloem also said Europe's economic outlook remained cautiously positive despite a recent slew of indicators pointing to an economic slowdown, and bad economic news from China and the United States. He warned that talk of crisis risked becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Since 2008 we have been sitting continually in crisis mode in our heads even when you can see from the real economy that we are emerging from it," he said. "Banks are much stronger, balances are much stronger and they have been cleaned of bad portfolios."
Elsewhere ECB's Coeure has told the Rheinische Post newspaper:
"Eurozone banks are in a much better position today than they were at the height of the debt crisis in 2011 and 2012. Thanks to the banking union they are now much more resilient."
Resilient with years of shoring up defences on cheap money methinks
Dijsselbloem - Banks are in a better place now
