Europe - European Central Bank

Who runs the ECB?

The ECB has a President and Vice-President and they sit on an Executive Board of six people that handle the day to day running of the Bank and look in detail at the issues that arise from this. They are responsible for the implementation of the strategic and policy decisions. Those decisions are made by two overall councils who meet regularly to monitor progress and discuss strategy. They are the Governing Council and the General Council.

Governing Council

The Governing Council is made up of the six members of the Executive Board and the Governors from each of the 12 National Central Banks who are part of the single European currency. This group looks at all the issues to do with the euro. They meet twice a month to set the level of interest rates and they also made all the decisions about the changeover to the euro in the run-up to the introduction of euro notes and coins on January 1st 2002.

General Council

The General Council is a larger group than the Governing Council. As well as all the members of the Governing Council it also includes the Governors of the four National Central Banks who are not a part of the single currency. The Governor of the Bank of England is therefore a member of this Council. This group consider issues that are faced by all European countries whether a part of the single currency or not. They meet quarterly. They may discuss issues like the Exchange Rate Mechanism (Denmark is still a member) or European Payments and Settlements systems (the main system is called TARGET).

There are around 1,000 staff members at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Recruited from all 15 EU countries, they work in close co-operation with the staff of the national central banks to prepare and implement the decisions of the ECB's decision-making bodies.

The ECB is independent from the rest of the European Community and maintains its own budget. This makes it independent of any political interference from member states.