The decision whether to grant such a privilege is taken by the competent supervisor – for small and medium-sized institutions, the national supervisors; for large banks, the ECB. There is therefore much to be said for granting these privileges in accordance with uniform criteria – both across countries and across institutions.
I’d like to be clear about one thing, however: the aim is not to call into question the protection schemes in general. The objective is to harmonise the supervisory treatment of the systems. We have therefore defined the relevant criteria and are currently conducting a public consultation that will run until the middle of April.