Brussels agrees powers to directly tackle British banks

Sounds too good to be true (and we know how the rest of the saying goes).

Could someone be about to represent the interests of the customer at long, long last?

Well it's about time, with the past record of Mickey Mouse agencies like the FSA what do you expect!

great news! let's hope that it doesn't get watered down on the way to final approval.

A typically inappropriate and misleading headline.

Citywire must be employing headline writers directly from the worst tabloids.

What can we expect next.

'Martians ate my baby'

I wouldn't expect a Brussels controlled quango to act any differently to the politically corrupt quango we have here (FSA). This is just another of the ongoing creeping federalism to get us into a united states of Europe by tangling us up in their institutions so that we become part of it by default. They can't win a vote so they do it by stealth under the guise of protecting the taxpayer/consumer.

Agree with Raymond. Why "...British Banks"?! It will deal with all European Banks surely. It feels a bit UKIP this article. We should expect more intelligence, less emotion from you guys.

If UK step an inch out of line UK officials will blow whistle and restrict UK banks but if another EU bank does the same the national officials will keep quiet and I also suspect that any good financial products will be restricted to avoid UK having any advantage over Europe. Travel round Europe and see how many things we have been forced to comply with are just ignored there.

This is the most disturbing news I have read in a long time.

Firstly it was the "building societies" which got into trouble, Northern Rock and Halifax. Yes, I know they were put into the banking sector but clearly they still don't behave as banks, and that's why they got into trouble.

Breaking up the banks into smaller units also flies in the face of common sense. It is only the big diverse banks which managed to get through the last two years which was mainly set off by the Americans and their bad loans which were sold as near cash items on balance sheets because of a good "marking name".

Letting Brussels mess with our London companies in the finance business is very dangerous. It is a world centre and this sends entirely the wrong message all over the world. this is one reason why they are in London now, and many centres in Germany in particularly can't wait to start pinching our business.

PS I have no vested interests here.

Tackle British banks over what? Truth is spot on they can't get us to vote for 'em so they have to meddle in our affairs in other ways. Brussels will do well to focus on their own backyard and have a good look at Fortis, Hypo to name but two. Our banks are doing just fine. Not a big fan of Nige but maybe he could let those duffers in Brussels in more Anglo Saxon terms what we feel about their persistent interference in our affairs as they seem unable to understand the educated phraseology used by our current leadership. Go Noige tell your mate Rumpy what's for.

Would anyone question the fact that countries differ in their financial life? How would you compare Italian and German banks? The UK continues to be at the heart of international banking; whatever their rrecent shortcomings.

Seeing that the EU accounts have never been signed off - that there is undoubted corruption in the CAP - that comments by Van Rompuy and others were at the level of an ill-informed office boy - that politicians and bankers in France would like to take a share of London's market - that they utterly failed to see what was happening to the Euro - that they resent the UK's determined independence from the Brussels bureaucracy which would raise a glass to an extension of their powers and an increase in their budget and our taxes - our answer must be - no thank you.

I have to agree with Jim Dedicoat. I live in France, and know something of their attitude to Rules that they don't agree with. I do not like the idea at all of some European organisation having the final say on anything that is more important to the UK than some other European country. London is the financial capital of Europe for a good reason. That's not to say that we don't need regulation, but I would prefer a British organisation to do the regulating than a foreign one, even one as flawed as the FSA. At least we can sack them if they don't do their job, try doing that with a European quango.

Give the EU's past record it is worrying that any action might not be totally without bias!

Response to Jim Dedicoat, you say it was Building Societies and you're right that they had a specific problem but Lloyds and RBS aren't looking too clever either. Also an older example - Barings suggests Banks can be guilty of not behaving like banks as well?

Too much interference and the banks will up sticks and move to Asia or the US as they have already threatened to do if there are any signs of the Banks being broken up

This is a disasterous step in the wrong direction. What do incompetent beauracrates based in Brussels know about International banking? they will meddle and disrupt and its one more step to 'federal Europe'.

Take note HSBC today announced they will consider relocating their HQ out of London if the UK government decides to force banks to seperate their investment banking business.

When will people wake up - banking employees and the intelligent public - and make their voices heard we don't want more political meddling. Yes, set the financial 'framework', monitor practices and intruments but don't impose layers of meddling, interferring and largely incompetent regulators who add nothing.

If we are foolish enough to give Brussels these new powers they will use them for the sole purpose of furthering their political ambitions. They will not act in the best interests of the British economy or the British people. Their political ambitions will not enhance the lives of the people they seek to dominate and the huge bureaucracy they are creating will consume huge amounts of money whilst achieving only negative results.

keep these johnny foreigners hands of our precious banks especially nat west as they have such deightful lady bank clerks,(the blokes are ok as well).

whatever would nelson think of this,make him turn in his grave after all he and his chaps went through

fair comment p williams

Will the bureaucrats in Brussels have any meaningful accountability if the UK exchequor loses billions in tax revenues as a result of the banks voting with their feet to move HQs to Zurich or the Far East ? Another Boston tea party!!

Please can we get sensible and tell Brussels to get stuffed

This is the organisation that could not GET their accounts signed off !!! and now they are going to gheck on our banks !!! don't make me laugh !!! jobs for the BOYS .... politicians never learn, thzy make the same mistake again and again.....!!! and witk our MONEY!!!......

I agree with all the negative comments above.

More jobs for the unsupervised boys in Brussels we never voted for who are up to God knows what and creating an unwanted financial burden on this country and undermining its sovereignty.

A charming reporter on CNBC just suggested that the Brussels initiative was aimed at bring British banks to heel as they were responsible for the financial chaos over the last couple of years. Apparently Bruni's part-time husband seems to have been behind it. The good news ( a bit worrying imo ) is that finance ministers still have to agree the measures. We know we cant trust Vince but how confident are we about George's stiff upper lip?

Time for the promised referendum !

All this will do is create yet more very expensive beauracrats in tall towers thinking up how best they can intervene in order to boost their own employment and ego. They should first get their own house in order by stopping all that unaccountable waste of funds and explain why their own accounts have not been properly signed off for years.

It will not happen!!!

Will this be comprised by the same body of financial boffins who allowed Greece to join the Euro despite the World Bank's warnings? God help us all when a European FSA kicks off - members will only be interested in their "home" economy (as Sarky Frog has already demonstrated by trying to blame Brit banks for the entire fiasco).

Crikey. After the first few replies I thought 'Maybe all the UKIP types are having a lie in today' But no...there you all are again right on cue spitting and hissing about johnny foreigner whilst bursting your buttons on your John Bull breeches.

Whilst people comment on out 'precious banks' , can someone please acknowledge that they took us to within a few hours of total meltdown, anarchy and martial law. The reason we are even having this conversation and the reason we are all losing our jobs and talking about austerity is because we had to mortgage our future by pumping cash into them because they were too big to fail. And they STILL are! And they've happily taken our enormous subsidy and continue to award themselves obscene bonuses as if nothing had happened. If our government is too spineless to do something about that then maybe Brussels is.

British banking is nothing to be proud of. It's incompetent and has put the British economy in a dangerous and vulnerable position. It leeches off our sharpest entrepreneurial minds and takes them away from starting good solid innovative companies that could be creating wealth and jobs. If Brussels wants to break them up. Let them. Meanwhile we should be striving to become more like Germany.

A Systemic Risk Board is useless unless it has a method for understanding the ‘Systemic Role’ that the inter-related variables in the complex system play! This then becomes about viability rather just verification (what auditors and credit rating agencies do today) and requires a different way of thinking about the challenge; a challenge identified by Adam Smith when he pointed out it required: “inquiry into the ‘nature and causes” of the complex (non-linear, counter-intuitive) system inter-relationships we are facing today.

Germany? Where four banks failed ?

Rajah Brookes - you are talking nonsence, The two biggest UK Banks, HSBC and Barclays did NOT take Government/Taxpayer investment money. Lloyds only had to because friend Brown forced them to absorb HBOS due to the latter's bad mortgage lending. RBS did indeed fail but due to their previous Boss and his unbelievable expansionist aims and that was nothing to do with being a Global Bank as such. Those others that failed were all UK based Building Societies and that was due clearly to mortgage lending and the imbalance with available funds. Over the years the Banks have been the second largest contributor to UK Government tax income just behind the Oil industry. Get real - Banks in Germany have indeed failed and generally speaking the Europeans are envious of the UK Banks and the London Financial centre importance

I agree with Hick's post - In much the same way EU fishermen do not respect the fishing quota, EU countries will do as they please, whilst in the UK, we will be expected to toe the line or else.

As for EU politicians, they are currently getting their rocks off at how gullible we are, at how we are paying for all the layers of bureaucracy they introduce, much more from the bullocks brigage no doubt.

If UK politicians are corrupt, EU politicians are 50 times more so, imho!

As you are off to Brazil Rajah, perhaps if there were to be a vote taken, yours will be nullified!

The EU is struggling, the euro much more: getting their hands on British banks will suit the monsters in europe! - then they can start lending the money taken from UK to pay so that Latvia, Romania, & all the umpteen balkan nations can get more money, so they can bleed us dry in the UK - the UK is one of the major contributors to the coffers of the EU - wish our politicians had the balls to get us out, oh no, they probably get back handers for handing our taxes to the EU, which is even more corrupt than any politician at westminster.

I want what some of Rajah Brooks is on. It must be delightful to be so optically deluded.

"new supervisory authorities for financial institutions" - more fingers to go in the till. Marta Andreasen, chief accountant to the EC, refused to pass the accounts of the EC, famously declaring the EC as "an open till waitng to be robbed". She had to go.

It is high time the British banks get their act together. London has been a financial center in the past, and now it is only an illusion; facilities and customer services are not by far the standards of many of the continental banks.

Apart from Rajah (a political axe to grind? No correlation with facts) most of above makes encouraging reading and good informed sense. How can we get message across to likes of George Os et alia that they must not budge on this Europe grab? Also maybe someone could nick Vince's passport and trousers for economic damage limitation purposes.......any volunteers?

Rajah seems to be the odd man out. The general drift of the above comments correctly point to solid opposition of the British people to the EU and our enforced continued membership of it. We have recently kicked out the Brown socialist government in the UK but a soviet Europe via the EU continues apace. The Tories should be very aware that they are expected to comply with the wishes of the people and take a more robust line with this corrupt and meddling outfit. I see no point in electing a government for them to give powers away to some foreign would be government.

Better off out

When earlier this year I commented on the mess we would face if Labour won the election I did warn that if Gordon got back into power Downing Street would end up in flames and HSBC would pack their bags and head off back to China.

After all HSBC stands for Home for Scottish Bankers in China.

After the Chief recently moved his office to China the writing was already on the wall. How many more banks will follow? It will only take a few major financial institutions to pack their bags and then how long would London stay the great financial centre we all know.

I agree with Jim.

Brussels diktat observed not by the French, Italians, Greeks and Germans to name but a few.

Corruption is rife, as well as illegality, viz the accounts.

No they will loot the Banks and leave us stuffed.

Better the Crown recovers powers, and not give more.

Look at farming, fisheries, subsidy frauds and commissioners doing the job they were paid to do, rather they protect the corrupt and fraudulent.

Yes the FSA incompetent and a little corrupt (protecting their own), but they are being removed.

Let me get this off my chest. We are not better OUT of Europe - we are better NOT IN !!

As long as we keep having these long winded discussions, the more the EU can chew off for themselves. Soon, there will be nothing left to discuss - or to vote FOR or AGAINST. The EU politicians ( and many of our own) KNOW that and that it is why we must have a vote, and SOON, to stop all this European lunacy. We don't need a "Keep Britain for The British" slogan, we just need to tell our politicians to say NO! and to KEEP saying NO!!

The Banks are important - but to EU they are not important in themselves - they are just another bit, one among many, to DEVOUR - and then we CAN"T VOTE!!