On the vote in the European Parliament concerning the report on retail financial services, Sahra Wagenknecht, Member of the European Parliament and of the executive of The Left explains:

In the report passed today by the European Parliament on competition in retail financial services, thanks to my initiative, two important positions have been anchored: on the one hand, the Parliament confirmed that Savings Banks and cooperative banks in particular are making an important contribution to financing the local economy and facilitating the access to financial services for all consumers. On the other hand, it is clear that the access to basic financial services, such as opening a bank account, constitutes a basic right.

Following a hearing of the EU Commission, every fifth adult in the EU does not have a bank account. In Eastern Europe, even a third of citizens are excluded from any kind of bank transfer. In Germany as well, the number of people to whom a bank account is refused keeps growing, and this makes their participation in social life almost impossible. Because without a bank account, there is hardly a chance to rent a flat, to find work, to receive a phone connection or to conclude an insurance contract, to name only a few examples.

That the share of people without bank account that in Germany amounts to about 550,000 is not even higher can be traced back mainly to the existence of savings and cooperative banks, which in contrast to private banks are not limited by the criterion of profit maximisation. All the more scandalous it is that the EU Commission continues to advance the privatisation and commercialisation of public banks. Here, there reveals itself the whole perversity of European competitive policy: laws that might limit the expansionist drive and the profit mongering of big private banks are successively abolished. That this leads to even greater dominance of just a few big private banks and that way more and more people are excluded from basic services, does not interest the EU Commission at all.

Today's decision by the European parliament sends a clear signal to the EU Commission to finally finish with its outrageous attacks against public banks and cooperative banks. Moreover, the Commission is being asked to identify and to eliminate the obstacles that stand in the way of exercicing the right to a bank account. The opening and management of a deposit account may not be denied to any person, only because he or she is poor or head over heels in debt! Now this right needs to be practically implemented in all EU member states.

Sahra Wagenknecht, MEP
Brussels/Berlin, 5 June 2008