European Central Bank announces cooperation program with Serbia

[News_Editor]

European Central Bank announces cooperation program with Serbia

2011-03-18 22:40:22 GMT+7 (ICT)

BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- The European Central Bank (ECB) on Friday announced the launch of a central bank cooperation program with the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), to be funded by the European Union (EU).

The EU allocated $3.5 million (€2.5 million) to the program from its Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). The ECB cooperation program is intended to support the NBS in implementing the central banking standards of the EU.

The deal was signed in Belgrade by Dejan Soskic, Governor of the NBS, Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Ambassador Vincent Degert, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia.

The program is considered another step forward in strengthening cooperation between banks in Europe in order to foster monetary and financial stability, as well as closer ties between the EU and Serbia.

It was designed to help NBS to prepare strategies, internal policies and economic models that meet the standards applied by central banks in the EU, as well as laws that transpose the EU regulatory regime into Serbian law.

The cooperation program will cover 11 different areas: financial sector supervision; legal harmonization; liberalization of capital movements; foreign exchange reserve management; monetary and exchange rate operations; financial services consumer protection; EU accession support; economic analysis and research; statistics; payment systems; and financial stability.

The protocol is a follow-up to an analysis of the specific needs of the NBS carried out in 2008-2009. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2013 and will involve experts from the ECB and a number of national central banks in the European System of Central Banks.

Serbia is in the process of joining the EU. The Balkan country officially applied for European Union membership in December 2009. The EU and Serbia agreed on a Stability and Association Agreement in 2008 and was ratified in January.

Under the agreement, Serbia may join the EU's free trade zone and its bilateral relations will become tighter within five years. Serbia still needs a number of reforms before gaining EU access, including fighting against corruption and organized crime, and cooperation with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-03-18