European Union’s finance ministers will on Thursday be asked to back an aggressive timetable which could see leaders agreeing to a radical overhaul the bloc’s patchy system of financial supervision by December. “We have a window of opportunity,” he told regulators and financial services industry bosses at a high-level conference organised by the Eurofi think-tank Mats Odell, Sweden’s financial markets minister, said that his country would push for broad political agreement for the proposed reforms at the December council meeting, and ask Thursday’s informal meeting of EU finance ministers in Gothenberg to support that timetable. The aim, he said, was to have new institutions up and running in 2010. “All member states must be prepared to walk that extra mile to make it happen,” he said. The proposed changes would create a new European Systemic Risk Board, bringing together the EU’s 27 central bank governors and European Central Bank representatives, to warn on threats to financial stability. It would also create three pan-EU supervisory authorities – for banking, insurance and the securities industry – which would draw up and help enforce a “common rulebook”. Day-to-day supervision of banks and other institutions would remain in the hands of national authorities. But, in spite of broad support for these proposals amongst many member states and industry players, there are still big questions over how the new bodies will work in practice – and significant political differences over their potential powers.