The European Central Bank said Wednesday it will charge eurozone banks a total 326 million euros ($359 million) for the cost of supervising them over two years.
"The total amount of fees to be recovered by the ECB for the costs of its prudential supervision of the euro area banking sector in the 2014-15 period will be 326 million euros," the central bank said in a statement.
The fees included 30 million euros for the costs incurred in the final two months of 2014 when the ECB assumed its new role as euro area banking supervisor, and 296 million euros for the anticipated expenditure for the full year 2015, it explained.
The Single Supervisory Mechanism or SSM, an autonomous unit within the ECB, took over as Europe`s banking watchdog in November and is directly responsible for monitoring 123 banking groups.
Those 123 banks would have to pay 289.7 million euros or 89 percent of the total amount of fees, while the remaining 36.3 million euros, or 11 percent of the total, would be recovered by around 3,500 less significant banks indirectly supervised by the ECB, it said.
