Johanna Treeck, Carlo Martuscelli and Carlo Boffa
An Italian bank making a big move to buy into a German bank sounds like exactly the sort of tie-up Europe's leaders have spent years crying out for, so the EU can rear more home-grown heavyweight corporate champions to compete with rivals from the U.S. and Asia.
Now that UniCredit this week actually made a swoop on Commerzbank, however, the devotees of deeper EU integration look set to be disappointed as Berlin's domestic interests — once again — outweigh pan-European dreams.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's instant condemnation of UniCredit's "unfriendly attack" suggests that ambitions for the cross-border scaling-up of the EU financial sector will remain, as they have been for a decade, just empty talk.
“All member states, not only Germany, are calling for greater financial integration, but when faced with potential takeover of national champions they start having ‘second thoughts’,” said Italian MEP Irene Tinagli, a former chair of the European Parliament’s economy committee.
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