Italy economy minister calls for Europe-wide banking union

The consolidation of the euro can only be achieved through the creation of a Europe-wide banking union, Italian Economy Minister Vittorio Grilli told Italian parliamentarians Wednesday. ''The realization of the Banking union, extended in all its components, to at least the member states which adopt the euro represents the necessary completion of monetary union, as the events of the past years have demonstrated,'' Grilli said during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Grilli added that in Europe a ''fractured approach'' to banking supervision makes it ''more difficult to reduce the costs of public finance and renders very strong the correlation between the banking system's stability and sovereign risk.''