PORTO CARRAS, June 21: France is pushing EU leaders meeting here to start the process of nominating Bank of France governor Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the European Central Bank, French sources said on Friday.

The Greek EU presidency said Thursday the leaders had put off a decision on naming a new ECB chief until October although Trichet remains the favourite after his acquittal by a French court on false accounting charges this week.

But Trichet’s candidacy is now expected to be mentioned in the final version of the published conclusions of the three-day EU summit in the Greek resort of Porto Carras, a French source said. There was no word in the draft conclusions made available Friday, but one source said: It will be in the communique.

Trichet, 60, is poised to succeed Wim Duisenberg as president of the Frankfurt-based ECB after Wednesday’s court ruling lifted a legal threat hanging over him for three years.

Trichet, 60, and eight co-defendants had been accused of overlooking falsified financial reports conceroning Credit Lyonnais in the early 1990s as the French state-owned bank plunged toward collapse.

French officials said Thursday President Jacques Chirac was hoping to get an “in-principle political agreement” on Trichet’s nomination.

What would be useful would be that European Council provides us with an in-principle political agreement at the Salonika summit on the name of Jean-Claude Trichet to succeed Wim Duisenberg for eight years, one official said.

France has hoped the agreement could be included in the text of summit conclusions to “launch the nomination procedure,” the official said, and that he could be officially nominated at the next meeting of EU finance ministers.

Duisenberg is due to leave the ECB in July although he had said he would be prepared to stay on if necessary if the Trichet case were not cleared up in time.

In May 1998, Trichet was promised the top job at the ECB, which sets monetary policy for the 12-nation euro zone, according to French sources who say there was a verbal agreement among European heads of state and government.

But the Bank of France governor was placed under judicial investigation in April 2000 on suspicion of spreading false information on the market and presenting and publishing inexact accounts at Credit Lyonnais.

Trichet had denied all charges against him, which date back to 1991, 1992 and early 1993 when he was treasury director at the French finance ministry with responsibility for state-owned enterprises like Credit Lyonnais.—AFP