The Deutsche Bundesbank, together with 17 national central banks of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission, two days ago, launched EU-funded programme to further strengthen the institutional capacities of the central banks in EU candidate countries and potential candidates from the Western Balkans. It is a two-year project as part of the activities of the central bank institutions from the region to join the ESCB. Besides our central bank, final beneficiaries of the programme are the central banks of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. Programme beneficiaries also include banking agencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, as banking supervisory agencies. The European Union has allocated Euro 2 million to the programme from its Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA II).
The aim of the programme is to further strengthen the institutional capacities of the final beneficiary institutions, notably by further enhancing their analytical and policy tools and by transferring the best international and European standards into national practices.
Over the course of the next 2 years, an intensive regional training programme on key central banking and supervisory issues will be organized. The training will focus particularly on the areas of banking supervision, financial stability, financial consumer protection and financial inclusion, recovery and resolution, monetary policy, payment systems, statistics, compliance and EU integration, governance policies, accounting and internal audit. The training will be provided by experts from the national central banks of the ESCB and the ECB.
There will also be two policy workshops for decision-makers on resolution of non-performing loans and governance issues. In addition to the regional training events, the programme will finance the implementation of specific bilateral measures to be defined in the meetings of the Programme Steering Committee.
The programme is being implemented by the Deutsche Bundesbank in partnership with the central banks of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. The European Central Bank will play an important role in this programme.
Our central bank is fully committed to its strategic goal of joining the ESCB and will strive to maximize the benefits of this programme.