MADRID, June 4 (Reuters) – The European Commission on Thursday chastised Spain for failing to implement its new capital requirements directive, following \u200cits earlier criticism of Madrid’s attempts to hinder BBVA’s takeover \u200cbid for Sabadell.<\/p>\n
In a letter seen by Reuters, the Commission told the Spanish government it \u200bwas in breach of EU regulations on the single supervisory mechanism, the capital requirements directive, and parts of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.<\/p>\n
While it did not specifically mention the takeover attempt, it said domestic \u200cmeasures in place in Spain \u2060were incompatible with the new CRD VI framework governing acquisitions and mergers.<\/p>\n
The EU’s new capital requirements directive had to \u2060be implemented by January 2026.<\/p>\n
Madrid has so far maintained that its domestic regulations are fully aligned with those in Europe. The Economy Ministry did not \u200bimmediately reply \u200bto a request for comment.<\/p>\n
BANKING M&A ‘BENEFITS \u200bEU ECONOMY’, COMMISSION SAYS<\/p>\n
The Commission \u200cin July officially challenged Madrid’s attempts to hamper BBVA’s \u20ac16 billion ($18.6 billion) bid for Sabadell, which opened an infringement procedure. The bid ultimately failed.<\/p>\n
Under Spanish law, the government could not stop BBVA from buying Sabadell’s shares, but it had the final word at a later stage on whether a merger \u200cwent ahead. Madrid said it needed to \u200bprotect jobs and competition.<\/p>\n
The Commission said it \u200bconsidered then that Madrid’s broad \u200bdiscretionary powers constituted unjustified restrictions on the freedom of \u200ccapital movement.<\/p>\n
“Consolidations in the banking sector benefit \u200bthe EU economy \u200bas a whole, and are essential for the achievement of the banking union,” the Commission said.<\/p>\n
Madrid now has two months to respond \u200band address the shortcomings \u200craised by the Commission.<\/p>\n
In the absence of a satisfactory response, it \u200bcould ultimately refer Madrid to the EU’s highest court.<\/p>\n
($1 = \u20ac0.8590)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bJes\u00fas Aguado; Editing by Jan Harvey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID, June 4 (Reuters) – The European Commission on Thursday chastised Spain for failing to implement its new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16824,16825,16826,333,82,4877,17,16543,16542],"class_list":["post-34650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-capital-requirements-directive","tag-domestic-regulations","tag-economy-ministry","tag-european-union","tag-madrid","tag-sabadell","tag-spain","tag-the-commission","tag-the-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}