Banking Regulation: The Gates Are Slowly Closing (EU)

American Thinker ^ | 2 Sep, 2026 | Thomas Kolbe

[MtnClimber]

Rising interest rates, record insolvencies, and permanent recession -- the looming economic crisis in the EU is taking shape. Brussels is responding by preparing the ground for capital controls. The regulators' latest target: European citizens' foreign bank accounts.

Starting January 11, 2027, trouble looms for EU citizens with foreign accounts. From that date, banks from third countries -- Switzerland, the UK, the US, or Singapore -- will be prohibited from offering so-called core banking services to European citizens. In essence, this covers three core functions: classic deposit-taking (checking, savings, or fixed-term accounts), lending, and the guarantee business. Banks wishing to continue offering these services to EU citizens will then be required to maintain a specifically licensed, fully supervised branch in exactly the member state where the customer resides.

Existing customers who held a foreign account as of July 11, 2026, may keep it, as long as the contractual basis is not fundamentally altered. Here lies a gray zone, an area of interpretive discretion for European authorities -- one that will almost certainly be used in the future to pull these customers back inside the EU's walls as well.

Officially, this new EU initiative is called Directive 2024/1619, better known as CRD VI -- the sixth Capital Requirements Directive. It was adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure by the European Parliament and the Council, on a proposal from the European Commission. As is so often the case with new EU regulations, the process simmered quietly in the background for a long time, largely unnoticed by public awareness. It formally entered into force on July 9, 2024, though it only becomes binding for affected third-country banks from January 11, 2027. The Commission itself officially markets this regulation as mere "harmonization of market access" for third-country banks -- a technocratic-sounding term

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: europeanunion; leftism

[MtnClimber]

I think both articles could be accurate. The EU is strangling business through their green energy and other regulations. No one wants to invest in EU-controlled companies. Europeans with foreign bank accounts can have investment accounts to invest almost anywhere. Pulling that money back and having EU managed domestic investment could be a way for the right hand of the EU to give a few more years of life to the domestic companies that they are strangling with their left hand.