(Adds details on credit trends in France)
By Tamora Vidaillet
PARIS, Nov 10 (Reuters) - European banks have not responded as much as leaders had hoped for when they launched measures to support the financial system, Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday.
Governments across the world have raced to shore up their banking systems in the face of the global financial crisis in recent weeks by taking measures including injecting capital into troubled banks or offering credit guarantees.
Speaking to France Inter radio, Juncker said that although banks were taking some steps to resume activities, they needed to do more to help the real economy.
"The banks have an enormous responsibility; they are reacting, yes, but they are not reacting with the drive that we were imagining when we had the support plans," said Juncker, who is prime minister of Luxembourg as well as heading the group of European finance ministers.
"The banks need to know that they are holding the health of the real economy in their hands. If they don't show more drive it would perhaps be necessary to revisit a certain number of plans which we have put in place," he said, without elaborating.
A survey last week from the Bank of France suggested that credit conditions had tightened for companies despite a 360 billion euro ($464 billion) bank rescue package unveiled by France last month..
More than 75 percent of French banks had sharpened lending criteria between July and September, hitting small and medium-sized companies more than large firms, according to the survey from the French central bank.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has warned lenders that the government could take direct stakes in banks that had benefitted from public bailout packages but refused to open the lending taps to companies.
The Bank of France survey, conducted between Oct. 7 and 14, suggested that banks may have to work harder given that over two thirds of the banks polled intended to tighten their credit allocation criteria in the final three months of the year.
The banks also predicted slightly tighter credit conditions for consumer loans at the end of the year, an area Juncker said needed to be addressed.
"It is necessary to do everything to put an end to this shrinkage in credit," he said.
Juncker said the struggling automobile sector, a blackspot given temporary plant closures by the likes of France's Renault and Peugeot, merited particular attention.
"We must examine very attentively the auto situation, we cannot not see what the Americans are doing, we cannot accept a situation in which the European auto sector disappears from the global scene," he said.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Friday that federal help for the distressed auto industry was a "high priority" of his transition. ($1=.7754 Euro) (Reporting by Tamora Vidaillet; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)