Start of the next phase of the Eurosystem cooperation programme with the Bank of Russia

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Bank of Russia) hosted today a workshop with Russian banks on the Basel II Internal Ratings-Based Approach (IRB), with the presentations delivered by experts from the Eurosystem, which comprises the European Central Bank (ECB) and the 15 national central banks of the euro area. The workshop took place within the Eurosystem cooperation programme with the Bank of Russia on banking supervision and internal audit, financed by the European Commission.

Representatives of the European Central Bank, the national central banks of France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, Delegation of the European Commission to Russia, the largest Russian credit institutions and the Bank of Russia took part in this international workshop. During the workshop, Eurosystem banking supervisory experts presented the main elements of the Basel II IRB approach and answered questions regarding practice and challenges of Basel II implementation. The workshop was the first event of this type in the framework of the programme, involving representatives from the Russian banking sector.

The workshop marks the beginning of the second phase of the Eurosystem cooperation programme with the Bank of Russia, which had been launched on 20 March 2008 ^[1]. The European Union has assigned 3 million EUR to the programme. One of the programme’s objectives is to assist the Bank of Russia in its implementation of the “International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards” of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II) ^[2]. The Eurosystem experts bring to the project their experience with the Basel II implementation.