European Commission inspectors yesterday raided eight leading European banks suspected of colluding to fix charges relating to transactions in the euro, the new single European currency.

The surprise swoops were the culmination of an investigation by the Commission, the 15-nation EU executive, into allegations that banks were swindling consumers by not passing on the savings generated by the elimination of exchange rate risks.

"Since January there have been indications that banks have been discussing the charges to apply to euro transactions," said Mr Karel Van Miert, the competition commissioner yesterday. "We believe there may be an understanding between the banks not to compete. We will see what our fishing today reveals."

The searches took place at Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank in Germany, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole in France, Banca Commerciale Italiana and Cariplo in Italy and Banco Bilbao and Argentaria in Spain. Mr Van Miert said other banks in other member-states were also suspected but the Commission did not have the resources for out more raids.

Since the euro was launched on January 1st anxiety has been growing in Brussels about the slack take-up by consumers and businesses. The Commission is particularly worried that by keeping charges for exchanging euro currencies high, the banks have robbed it of the single currency's most touted selling point - that it would reduce costs for travellers and enterprises doing cross-border business.

Mr Van Miert announced the raids during a hearing on bank charges at the European parliament. Ms Christa Randzio-Plath, chairwoman of the parliament's monetary affairs sub committee, said 40 recent German visitors to Strasbourg found they had to pay 15 different charges when changing deutschmarks to French francs.

But Mr Nikolaus Bomcke, secretary-general of the European Banking Federation, said exchange rate risk was only one part of the costs associated with changing currencies.