Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-26-Speech-4-099"
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"en.20001026.3.4-099"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I too should like to thank our colleague, Mrs Peijs, very much for her report and for being so persistent in her efforts to achieve results for the public. On 1 January 2002, the euro will also become a reality for the public, because then we will have the euro in our pockets. Today the average fee for transferring EUR 100 to another country in the internal market is EUR 17.10, many times more than the fees for domestic transfers. In the future, the euro area will also feel like a domestic area and the public do not understand why in this area, in which there are no exchange-related risks and in which electronic payments with Internet banking are increasingly becoming a matter of course, transferring money from Munich to Salzburg is considerably more expensive than transferring money from Munich to Kiel.
The advantages of the euro need to be demonstrated to the public and also to small and medium-sized businesses, precisely because we are having problems at the moment with the acceptance of the euro and it seems to many as though large companies and banks are benefiting from it, but not the man in the street.
For me, the argument that nowadays very few transfers of euros are made to other countries in the euro area does not count either. That is a chicken-and-egg debate. We in Brussels are of course experiencing this ourselves as Members, but our colleagues are too, that we do not make transfers abroad because of the high charges linked to the euro. I am firmly convinced that if prices fall the number of transfers will increase in leaps and bounds and people will avail themselves of this possibility. I welcome the fact that the Commission is maintaining its pressure on the banks and that it may increase the pressure further with the action it is taking against 120 banks. The European Central Bank should also exert increased pressure.
The proposal by Mrs Peijs and myself also seeks to bring the banks together around one table, not to lay down the law, but because we simply cannot increase the pressure any further from the political side. Neither do we want any price regulation in this sector, but we should at least coordinate this. The ECB would seem the ideal candidate to make progress on single data formats and uniform bank sort codes in Europe. I also hope that the low prices will not come at one fell swoop in five years' time, but that they will come gradually and that it will already be possible to see some progress as early as 2002. At long last we will have achieved our aim if the banks compete on offering customers cheap transfers abroad. Then we will have a real market in this sector."@en1
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