“Europe is for its people and not for Germany”, said one placard waved during a manifestation. Cyprus’s banking sector dwarfs the size of its economy and has been severely hurt by exposure to its neighbour Greece. The levy on bank accounts is part of a 10 billion euro bailout by the European Union broke with previous practice that depositors’ savings were sacrosanct.
According some EU officials, Eurozone ministers urged Cyprus to let smaller savers escape a levy on bank deposits, before a parliamentary vote originally due for today 19 March but eventually postponed that will either secure the island’s financial rescue or threaten default. The finance ministers said they favoured a higher 15.6 percent hit for richer savers, so more modest accounts could be spared.
Particularly Russia proved to be sympathetic with Cyprus. President Vladimir Putin is reported to have said that such a decision would be “unfair, unprofessional and dangerous”. At this regard, Moscow is considering extending an existing 2.5 billion euro loan to help bail the island out and said the fact it had not been consulted about the bailout could come into play.
Other than the social unrest throughout the island, the bank deposits haircut in Cyprus has shredded confidence in the 100,000 euro guarantee on savings offered across the European Union and raised fears of bank runs in other debt-strained countries if savers there worry it could happen to them. Indeed Cyprus’s problems are threatening to disrupt the calm brought to the bloc over the last eight months by the European Central Bank’s promise to protect troubled countries. Of course Brussels has emphasised that the measure is a one-off for a country that accounts for just 0.2 percent of European output. Now the worst fear is that savers in other, larger European countries become nervous and start withdrawing funds, although there was no immediate sign of that on Monday.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, elected just three weeks ago, said that the tax was an alternative to a disorderly bankruptcy. “It is painful but will eventually stabilise the economy and lead it to recovery”. Nevertheless approval in Cyprus’s 56-member parliament is far from a given as no party has an absolute majority and three parties say outright they will not back the tax.
Some in Europe wonder whether the last Saturday Eurogroup decision has address properly the problem or has settled the Eurozone again in dire straits wasting the Mario Draghi promise of last July that the EC would have done “whatever it takes to save the Euro”.
1. On 22 March 2013 at 10:59, by Niklas
Replying to: Not just a Cypriot problem
The idea to levy savers up to 100.000 Euro came not from the Eurozone group but was an idea of the Cyprus President being pushed through also by the ECB after Cyprus had neglected negotiations for quite a while. The German government can only be blamed for running into this trap. That would be part of the whole truth. At the same time you could mention the unethical economic model of Cyprus aswell as the very fact that it is not quite relevant to the Euro. And the talk about shredding confidence in the guarantee in savings all over Europe is a media driven hype. I would wish for one moment that there would be one Leader like Barroso, Van Rompuy or Holland or Monti openly taking position against these Anti-German-Campaigns. But well would be too easy to face the fact that whole big mess was done by the Cyprus government and the Cyprus banks, offering tax havens to rich russian oligarchs and not by the German government, which is taking its responsibilty up to the German and European tax payers.
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