The European Central Bank (ECB) has unveiled a new voting system for its governing council designed to avoid unwieldy decision-making after the enlargement of the European Union.

The council, which is charged with setting monetary policy for the euro zone, has decided to rotate votes among members once the number of central bank governors exceeds 15. Under the current system, each central bank governor has one vote. "When the number of national central bank governors exceeds 15, they will exercise a voting right on the basis of a rotation system," the Bank said in a statement.

The ECB has been forced to adapt to the possibility that up to 15 states could join the EU over the coming years. Ten of these are due to accede in 2004.

The bank said the number of votes in its governing council - which consists of six executive board members and the head of each euro-zone national central bank - would never be more than 15, to be divided over three groups. A group consisting of the five largest states would hold four votes. A second group, composed of half of all member-states, would share eight votes among them, and a third group, consisting of the other states, would hold three voting rights.

The member-states would be ranked according to a mixed weighting of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and aggregated balance sheets of financial institutions. GDP would weigh for five-sixths in the ranking, and the balance sheets for one-sixth, the Bank said.

The Bank would work with the present system as long as the euro zone consisted of a maximum of 15 members, with the new system adopted if there were more than 21 states in the euro zone, it said. - (Additional reporting Reuters)