An important formal step; a statement by the Ministry of Finance that they have no objections as to the Barlays takeover has today been taken. See the released statement (in Dutch) here and do note that this does'nt mean that the RBS consortium would not get a similar statement. I'm pretty sure RBS, Fortis and Santander will also get a statement of no-objection.
By the way, the statement comes with quite a wish-list of conditions for Barlays and it is countersigned by the central bank (on the request of the ministry of finance). Although the formal remark is 'notwithstanding the institutional responsibilities' it remains strange that the responsible Minister would want his advisor to sign his statement as well. So it does look a bit as if the Ministry of Finance is leaning quite a bit on the central bank expertise. Or, less poetic, in the case things might go wrong, it will also be the central bank that has to take part of the blame.....
