FRANKFURT (MNI) – The European Parliament’s approval today of a new
European financial supervisory framework, including the establishment of
the European Systemic Risk Board, is a big step, European Central Bank
President Jean-Claude Trichet said on a German television program
Wednesday afternoon.

“I’d say we are making a very important step forward,” Trichet told
the “Heute in Europe” (Today in Europe) program on Germany’s public ZDF
television station.

“The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) will have the particular
responsibility to concentrate on the systemic risks, the risks that are
really dealing with cross-border, with cross-national problems, that are
not dealing with individual supervision, individual supervision
authorities,” he said.

The ESRB will be chaired for its first five years by the president
of the ECB, which will be Trichet until he steps down on October 31,
2011. The other pieces of the regulatory framework approved today by the
European Parliament are micro-surveillance agencies for the banking and
insurance industries.

[TOPICS: MT$$$$,M$$FX$,M$$EC$,M$X$$$,M$$CR$,MGX$$$]