LONDON (Reuters) - The European Central Bank's landmark project to unify settlement of securities across the euro zone won't be launched in June unless the platform is more stable, a senior official said on Wednesday.
The aim of the new platform is to drive down the cost of cross-border trading to strengthen Europe's capital market and attract more economy-boosting investment.
Paul Bodart, a board member of the ECB's Target 2 Securities (T2S) platform, said there were still technical issues to be resolved ahead of the planned June 22 launch.
"The situation is still not at the level of stability that the board is expecting," Bodart told a conference held by AFME, the European banking trade body.
The board will meet on May 25 to decide if the launch will go ahead, he said. "We cannot launch a platform that is not stable enough."
The new platform will settle euro-denominated securities, exchanging legal ownership for cash as the final part of a transaction. Until now this has been done by a patchwork of national and international settlement houses.
T2S is being rolled out in phases, with Italy's Monte Titoli joining in the first wave due next month.
Bodart said a delay to September would still allow the second wave in March 2016 to go ahead, along with a final third wave.
But a postponement beyond September would lead to "dramatic change" and put the whole project's timing in doubt, Bodart said.