Call for protection of small bank clients
Source: AFP |
March 18, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
EUROPEAN Parliament president Martin Schulz yesterday called for small-scale bank customers to be protected under Cyprus's European Union bailout terms, saying any solution must be "socially acceptable."
"The participation of bank customers is right," he told Welt am Sonntag's online edition, but he pointed out that citizens were not responsible for causing the problem.
As a condition for a desperately needed 10 billion-euro (US$13 billion) bailout, fellow eurozone countries and international creditors have imposed a levy of up to 9.9 percent on all deposits in the island's banks.
It is the first eurozone bailout in which private depositors are having to help foot the bill.
Under the bailout deal, the levy will see deposits of more than 100,000 euros held by all residents of Cyprus hit with a 9.9 percent charge. Below that threshold, the levy drops to 6.75 percent.
Many Cypriot feels betrayed by the European Union and his government for agreeing the bailout terms.
"How do I feel about the bailout? I will tell you from the heart. We are facing an economic war," said Mano, a souvenir shop owner in Cyprus.
"My son is in the army. Next year he will be going to university. He has saved five thousand euros. But against his will, they will take 300 euros from him. The EU will be stealing legally from his pocket," said Mano.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have welcomed the agreement on the bailout, while Rainer Bruederle, a leading member of her junior coalition partners, has not so far committed to saying whether his Free Democrats will support the rescue deal in the German parliament.
As with past EU rescue packages, the deal must be approved by Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.
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