The Spanish Vice-President and Minister for the Economy, Elena Salgado, said that she was in favour of the immediate publication of the stress tests recently carried out on European banks in order to prove the solvency of the Spanish banking system.

In declarations made to the Spanish news channel Cadena SER she said that ‘Spain wanted the stress tests on the solvency of European banks to be made public knowledge as soon as possible so that it can be demonstrated that Spanish banks are in an excellent position of solvency’. Salgado also said that she would ask for the ‘immediate’ publication of these tests at the next Ecofin meeting on 13th July.

The stress tests were first carried out on the 19 most important banks in the United States in 2009 in an operation of transparency in which the need to recapitalize most of them with 74,600,000 million euros became apparent. In Europe a similar initiative was put forward by the Bank of Spain. The idea was put to the European Commission by Spain in its role as president of the EU and was subsequently approved.

The difference between the stress tests carried out in the United States and Europe is that the tests in Europe affect many more financial entities – possibly between 26 and 100. The results of the tests are due to be published before the end of July. The fundamental objective of the tests is to show that the banks in the test have sufficient capital to overcome a hypothetical financial crisis. The amount of public funds necessary in order to help those entities in difficulties will be announced in addition to revealing their financial situation.

The European Commission has approved the rescue plan aimed at helping the Castilla La Mancha building society which received a state guarantee of 3,000 million euros in March 2009 followed by an injection of capital of 1,300 million from the Deposit Guarantee Fund, a contribution of 350 million euros towards boosting its liquidity and 2,500 million euros to help maintain the value of its shares.

Yesterday Brussels postponed the Spanish guarantee plan for Spain, Ireland, Denmark and Hungary until 31st December.