Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, on Tuesday increased political pressure on regional governments to speed up consolidation of the country’s public-sector Landesbanken, warning them not to further delay “inevitable” change.

Germany’s banking market has been the worst hit in Europe by the recent credit market turbulence, which caused two banks to collapse and forced politicians to engineer two bail-outs. Analysts see the weaknesses of the banks in one of the continent’s most fragmented markets as a central factor in the collapses and a fresh incentive for consolidation.