Schaeuble disagrees with ECB over attempt to pool bank levies

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has squared off with the European Central Bank over the pace of pooling bank levies in a euro-area resolution fund, potentially slowing the proposal’s progress into law.

ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure said last week that the proposed 10-year time for merging national contributions to the Single Resolution Fund “is too long and should be shortened, possibly to five years.”

A day later, ECB president Mario Draghi underscored this assessment. Mr Schaeuble countered that halving the time allotted for moving to a “genuinely common” fund, as Mr Coeure put it, would entail forcing banks to pay into the fund in half the time as well, a point contested by some ministers and the European Parliament.