EU banking deal ‘won’t help SMEs’

Proposals for an EU banking union hammered out over the past few days are unlikely to ease the credit crunch for SMEs.

Moreover, it remains to be seen whether it will stem the banking crisis that has paralysed the region over the past few years.

“It is going to be much different from now on than it was two years ago. But it is quite a shallow banking union and far from the deep banking union that some had been calling for,” says Philip Lane, economics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin.