EUROPEAN ACTION:EU FINANCE ministers have moved to protect people's savings by doubling the minimum level of deposit guarantee across the European Union to €50,000, up from €20,000.
They also pledged not to let any banks fail that could cause a systemic threat to Europe's financial system in an effort to inject some badly-needed confidence into money markets.
"We have agreed to assure the solidity and stability of our financial system and carry out any measure to reach that objective," said French finance minister Christine Lagarde, who added that Europe was united in the face of the ongoing financial market crisis.
Ms Lagarde, who spoke on behalf of current EU president France, also floated the possibility that EU states would act to recapitalise banks hit hard by the financial crisis.
"We are not going to tolerate a Lehman Brothers scenario," she said as banking shares continued to slide on world stock markets, with British bank Royal Bank of Scotland one of the worst affected. It lost 40 per cent of its value in a single frantic day of dealing.
British chancellor Alistair Darling flew back from the Ecofin meeting to attend crisis talks with Gordon Brown and finance regulators.
The agreement by EU finance ministers to raise deposit guarantees across Europe was the first real co-ordinated action taken by the Union to address the crisis in spite of successive pledges of united action. Yet even this political deal was a hard-fought compromise, with several poorer eastern European states refusing to sign up to an earlier plan to raise the minimum deposit guarantee across Europe to a sum of €100,000.
"There is a whole series of countries - I would say the majority - which shared our preference to set a minimum of €100,000," said Spanish finance minister Pedro Solbes. The current minimum level of deposit guarantee under EU law is €20,000.
Europe has come in for tough criticism from bankers for failing to come up with the type of co-ordinated "bailout" plan that the US has launched to deal with the credit crunch.
"Everything is evolving so quickly, but a more co-ordinated response would be more welcome," said Alan Brown, chief investment officer at British fund manager Schroders.
But EU leaders continue to oppose a pan-European bailout fund and are insisting that each member state is responsible for the health of its own banks. German chancellor Angela Merkel repeated her opposition to the creation of an EU rescue fund yesterday.
Spain became the first EU country yesterday to set up a national fund, similar to the one in the US, to buy bank assets. "The fundamental objective is to promote the smooth functioning of Spanish credit markets," said Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who added that it would buy assets of the "highest quality".
In the absence of a united political response to the crisis hitting Europe's financial institutions, central bankers yesterday did their best to try and inject confidence into markets.
"We have no reason to think the stock markets will collapse. There is no reason for that to happen. The companies behind them are companies that are fundamentally solid," said French central bank governor Christian Noyer.
ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet took the unusual step of speaking to the press after the meeting of euro zone finance ministers late on Monday night in Luxembourg.
"You can tell the citizens they can count on the ECB," said Mr Trichet.
EU policy
EU common principles on bank interventions:
• Interventions should be timely and the support should in principle be temporary;
• Governments will be watchful regarding the interests of taxpayers;
• Existing shareholders should bear the consequences of the intervention;
• Governments should be in a position to bring about a change of bank management;
• The management should not retain undue benefits - governments may have the power to intervene in remuneration;
• Legitimate interest of competitors must be protected, in particular through the state aid rules;
• Negative spill-over effects should be avoided.