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The European Commission was to forge ahead on Wednesday with detailed proposals for tough financial supervision amid horse-trading over a pivotal role for the Bank of England’s governor.

The EU announcement, on the eve of a summit of the Group of 20 leading world economies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will also include plans for new pan-European super watchdogs to oversee banks, insurers and securities firms.

The emergence of the BoE’s Mervyn King as the leading contender to be the deputy head of a new European Systemic Risk Board, expected to be chaired by the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, is aimed at overcoming misgivings emanating from the City of London.

The new bodies will be responsible for identifying threats to the EU economy as a whole and will have the power to demand national action or impose mediation on national supervisors in the event of disagreement.

The aim is to avoid a repeat of last year’s financial crisis which saw over-leveraged banks go under or require massive state bailouts.

But it is this overarching power that has Britain and some other EU nations worried about the proposals, agreed at a European Union summit in June but which must be backed by member states and the EU parliament if they are to come into force.

“The devil is in the detail,” one European source said.

Backing from Britain — Europe’s biggest financial centre — is vital if the new structures are to be up and running as planned by the end of next year.

Under the commission proposals, the European banking authorities should have “the power to require national supervisory authorities to take specific action” to remedy emergency situations, according to a draft text.

The commission itself would have powers to decree an emergency situation. Hard money training