serbia, as for any other advanced or emerging economy, to pursue sound fiscal policies. as an open economy facing balance of payment challenges, it is crucial that serbia pursues stability - oriented macroeconomic policies that will bring international recognition and put the country in a position to finance domestic and external deficits temporarily, which in turn would smooth its development process. another lesson drawn from the crisis by the eu was that there was a need to review and reinforce the structures for micro and macro - prudential supervision. the result has been the establishment of three pan - european supervisory authorities that have been given powers to promote eu interests in securing financial stability while day - to - day supervisory powers remain at the member state level. on the macro - prudential side, the ecb has been asked to take on challenging new obligations arising from the establishment of the european systemic risk board ( esrb ). the ecb provides the chair of the esrb and its secretariat. while the ecb has for many years raised its voice on financial stability concerns and risks in the euro area, the new esrb must work from an eu - wide perspective and assume the additional role of issuing warnings and recommendations. the authorities responsible for financial stability will either need to comply with those recommendations or explain why they do not wish to do so. we consider this a useful way forward in the absence of the more radical step of a transfer of competencies from the national to the european level. from the point of view of the individual country, including serbia, i would also stress how important it is that the financial stability mandate is clearly allocated and that the central bank plays an important contributory role in this context. we have drawn a number of other conclusions from the financial crisis in europe – including at central bank level. we draw our inspiration from a firm intention to perform our tasks in a better way so as to avoid a repetition of what we have been through over the last couple of years. the implication of this is that, to some extent, the best practices of central banking in the eu are a moving target, since we consider it our duty to remain always at the forefront of developments that will help us to achieve our objectives in the best way possible. from this perspective, today ’ s event should not only be seen as marking the continuation of an already strong partnership between the national bank of serbia and a large number of national central banks in the european union. it should hopefully also highlight a partnership that will continue for many years, even

gertrude tumpel - gugerell : protocol to bring the national bank of serbia into line with eu central banking standards introductory statement by ms gertrude tumpel - gugerell, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at the press conference on the occasion of the signing of the protocol between the european central bank, the national bank of serbia and the delegation of the european union to the republic of serbia, belgrade, 18 march 2011. * * * mr soskic, governor of the national bank of serbia, mr degert, ambassador and head of the delegation of the european union to the republic of serbia, ladies and gentlemen, i am very happy to be back here in belgrade. like last time, i am here to announce the start of a close cooperation programme between the ecb, the national central banks of the eu and the national bank of serbia. this programme, which has in fact already been under way since 1 february 2011, is again funded by the eu. much has happened since i was last in belgrade on 1 september 2008. at the end of the previous cooperation programme, we delivered a needs analysis report to the then governor, radovan jelasic. since then we have experienced a major financial crisis that has affected both the eu and the republic of serbia. i would like to reflect on these two points in my introductory remarks. the needs analysis report that we completed in may 2009 made a number of recommendations for further advancement of the national bank of serbia in technical domains and for amendments that would be required to serbian legislation. such changes are necessary for serbia to receive acknowledgement as being prepared for joining the european union and the national bank of serbia to have reached a level that would be commensurate with being ready to join the european system of central banks. the ecb cooperated with 17 national central banks in preparing that needs analysis report for the national bank of serbia. today we are proud to announce that we have 21 national central banks on board. we have elaborated a detailed plan of what we intend to do when, and how, over the next two years, on the different components of the programme. we believe that having such a large group of partners working with the ecb will benefit both the programme and the national bank of serbia. in the needs analysis report two years ago we looked at six areas of central banking of the national bank of serbia. as part of the current programme, as you can see from our joint press release,