The need to address such gaps prompted important decisions in the EU with the objective of establishing a new framework for macro-prudential oversight at EU level. Following last week’s approval by the European Parliament of the relevant legislative proposals, this institutional lacuna will be filled at the beginning of 2011 with the establishment of the European Systemic Risk Board as a new EU body responsible for conducting macro-prudential oversight at the European level, with the conferral of specific supporting tasks on the ECB. This is part of a broad comprehensive review of the EU institutional framework for supervision, which includes also the enhancement of micro-prudential supervision through the establishment of three European Supervisory Authorities – ESAs for the banking, securities and insurance sector respectively. The ESRB will be chaired by the ECB President. The membership with voting rights (37) will include all the Governors of the EU central banks (27). This will ensure that the financial stability analysis of the ESRB will benefit from the macro-economic, financial and monetary expertise of the EU central banks. The ESRB will be responsible for the macroprudential oversight of the EU financial system and will have the following main tasks: (i) the identification and prioritisation of systemic risk: (ii) the issuance of risk warning and where appropriate recommendations for remedial action; (iii) the issuance of a warning to the Council of Ministers on the existence of an emergency situation, to trigger further action from national and EU authorities.
In this context, the ECB and the 3 Level 3 Committees, predecessors of the ESAs, are proceeding in a dialogue on issues of common interest. V.  Concluding remarks  Let me conclude. The ESRB will have a challenging task considering the high level of expectations about its impact as well as the difficulties surrounding the area of financial stability which I mentioned earlier. The success of the ESRB will also depend on the commitment of all stakeholders to contribute effectively to its mission. The ECB, on its part, is fully committed to ensure all the necessary support to allow the ESRB to fulfil the important responsibilities assigned to it by the Member States. The ECB is committed to continue to invest on its analytical capabilities so as to enhance risk surveillance processes and produce high quality risk assessments with a view to inform ESRB decisions. It is also committed to devote efforts to develop a coherent macroprudential policy framework, thereby contributing to the efforts being done at the global level in this domain, also well reflected in this conference. Having said this, let me recall that the most important contribution that a central bank can provide to the maintenance of financial stability is to preserve price stability. Maintaining price stability has been, and will continue to be, the primary mandate of the European Central Bank, and it will not be affected at all by the assignment of new responsibilities in the macroprudential area. BIS Review 125/2010  5