It's about time the EU harmonised savings protection and banking licences

How confused am I?

If you're a UK saver you get £35,000 worth of protection on your savings, but

If your savings provider has a banking licence with an Irish Bank you get €100,000.

Wouldn't it be nice if the good old EU, or European Central Bank, harmonised everything so that all EU citizens get the same level of savings protection regardless of which member state they live in and regardless of who's banking licence is being used.

Come on MEPs, pull your fingers out!

All EEA member states have to meet a mimimum protection level of €20,000, so there is already a degree of harmonisation on this. The danger of all countries having the same level is that is would be at the lower end of the spectrum, and individual states wouldn't be able to offer their own citizens more protection.

At the end of the day, it is clear that no government is willing to let a retail bank go under. As we've seen with Bradford & Bingley, regulators and government are making arrangements to safeguard deposits (and therefore confidence) bu selling them off to other firms. This makes the Deposit Protection Scheme almost redundant.

Having said that, I would always make sure my deposits were spread between banks (if I had more than £35,000!)

I've read that the French and Germans are cross with the Irish for undermining fair competition and are calling for EU-wide consistency in terms of respective Government's actions to stablise their financial systems.