Busy day for the Italian banking sector. Shares of transalpine banks lost as much as 11% on Tuesday after Rome’s surprise announcement of a proposed tax on bank superprofits.
Last year Spain also introduced an exceptional tax on large financial institutions that had benefited from the rise in interest rates, with the intention of Madrid to compensate for the important measures put in place to support the purchasing power of Spanish households against inflation. It is not the only country: Hungary, the Czech Republic and Lithuania have also targeted the banking establishments, while Latvia is seriously considering it.
“Budget normalization”
But, for Alexandre Baradez, this should not be seen as the beginning of a European generalization of taxes on the “excess profits” of banks. “These are choices that are made individually by country” and that must be “looked at under a very broad prism of budget normalization, even if it is more or less well done here or there”, he stressed, recalling that the European Central Bank (ECB) ” has asked states to pay attention” to their budgetary trajectories.
“It is clear that we will not see this, for example, in France or Germany”, estimated Alexandre Baradez, but “it will take another form” in these countries, such as “an increase in the taxation of real estate” or “less coverage of certain health expenses”.
Source: BFM TV
