He commented: "Barnier’s proposal does not even address the 'too big to fail' issue. Under this proposal huge banks wouldn’t have to be split up into smaller parts, they would simply have to stop a very small proportion of their proprietary trading or transfer it to another entity in the same group. Our position is that no bank should be so large that they can extort money from the state when it runs into trouble."

Klute, who is the GUE/NGL coordinator on Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs committee, added: "The Commissioner’s definition of proprietary trading is extremely narrow, and even market making is going to be excluded from this definition. This means that it would be business as usual for most European banks."