{"id":269347,"date":"2025-07-17T12:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269347\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T12:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:55:09","slug":"spain-violated-eu-rules-by-meddling-in-banking-merger-says-brussels-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269347\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain violated EU rules by meddling in banking merger, says Brussels \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Brussels vs national capitals<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Commission has been in talks with Spain over the case since last year. After the complaint, the Spanish government will have two months to respond. After that, the Commission can challenge the Spanish government at the EU\u2019s top court, in a procedure which could last years and result in major fines.<\/p>\n<p>There are other fact-finding Commission conversations taking place, on EU bank mergers, but these conversations are not public. The preliminary talks, known as \u201cpilot procedures,\u201d represent the step before a formal infringement procedure.<\/p>\n<p>A similar \u201cpilot procedure\u201d is ongoing with Italy \u2014 which used national security provisions to intervene in a domestic banking merger, UniCredit-BPM. The Commission is currently examining Italy\u2019s response to its questions within the EU Pilot, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Earlier this week the Commission sent a letter of concerns to Italy warning that it may have violated the bloc\u2019s merger rules with its UniCredit-BPM decision.<\/p>\n<p>If the Commission chooses to challenge national blocks of bank mergers more frequently, it would be a direct challenge to governments, who keep their national champions on a tight leash. The German government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/germany-antitrust-national-security-defense-legal-commerzbank-italy-takeover-unicredit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">intervened extensively<\/a> to prevent a merger between its lender Commerzbank and Italian bank Unicredit, although it did not formally block it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish economy ministry said it has received the letter and will \u201ccontinue to cooperate constructively\u201d with the Commission \u2014 although it noted that the laws in question, which include the discretionary powers for the economy minister, \u201chave been in force for quite some years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brussels vs national capitals The Commission has been in talks with Spain over the case since last year.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[3427,90725,331,1442,30,2438,2000,299,5187,1699,7558,2199,17470,2441,2452,28458,2443,811,1199,6861,104,6647,7162],"class_list":{"0":"post-269347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-banking","9":"tag-banking-union","10":"tag-banks","11":"tag-competition","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-department","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european","17":"tag-european-union","18":"tag-financial-services","19":"tag-italy","20":"tag-maria-luis-albuquerque","21":"tag-markets","22":"tag-media","23":"tag-mergers","24":"tag-regulation","25":"tag-security","26":"tag-services","27":"tag-single-market","28":"tag-spain","29":"tag-stability","30":"tag-teresa-ribera"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114868684297860000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}