Banks have been using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to reduce retail banking services, Alfred Sant fears.
The Labour MEP has called on the European Commission to explain how it is acting to ensure that the pandemic is not used by banks to permanently reduce services for consumers.
MEP Alfred Sant. Photo: Darrin Zammit LupiBanks across the EU have shut branches and restricted in-person services as a way of ensuring social distancing and protecting staff from coronavirus contagion over the past months.
Sant wants the Commission to ensure that an adequate level of banking services are maintained for consumers and suggested linking state aid for banks to conditions requiring them to retain a level of retail banking services.
He made the calls in a parliamentary question tabled at the same time as the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament presented a plenary amendment on the same topic upon Sant’s advice.
The amendments are to the Annual Competition Report that will be voted next week in the European Parliament’s plenary session. One of the proposed changes is that state aid to banks should be accompanied by an obligation towards providing retail services to "small" clients – individual EU citizens.