Proposals to reinvigorate the Fund’s oversight of the international monetary system – surveillance – lie at the heart of the Medium Term Strategy endorsed at this year’s Spring Meeting of the IMF. Together with the more widely publicised, and politically charged, commitment to reform the Fund’s governance, by rebalancing the quotas that determine member countries’ voting rights, they represent a serious attempt, in the words of the Fund’s Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato, to ‘meet the challenges posed by globalisation.’ The main purpose of my lecture tonight will be to explain the role which a refocused Fund could and should be playing in promoting international monetary stability, and to outline some steps to build on the agreements reached at the Fund’s Annual meetings in Singapore in September. The next six months will be critical. It is important that we use them to think hard about what the Fund does, as well as to push forward the second stage of the governance agenda. The changing role of the IMF The IMF was originally set up at the end of the Second World War ‘to promote international monetary cooperation through a permanent institution which provides the machinery for consultation and collaboration on international monetary problems’. The collapse of the system of pegged exchange rates in the early 1970s precipitated a lengthy debate between those, led by the French, who favoured a return to managed exchange rates, and others, led by the Americans, who favoured floating exchange rates.
Allow me to also extend a word of gratitude to Radu Deac, the Chairman of ELEC Romania since its establishment, for his steady contribution to promote Romania in Europe and Europe in Romania. It is not that the Eurozone does not have its own problems, yet the strengthening of its governance framework is what one may call “work in progress”. It is our duty, I think, to keep believing in the European project, as the only valid one for securing peace and prosperity on our continent. As I have previously stated, whenever obstacles emerge, I cannot help recalling the words of Jean Monnet, one of the EU founding fathers: “Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”. I trust that this Conference, which has a lot of outstanding panellists, will address those problems as well. Among the speakers, I am particularly pleased to see Jeffrey Franks, another old friend of Romania, with whom we had a fruitful co-operation in the past. On this note, allow me to finish and wish every success to the works of this conference. Thank you. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches