ECB's Coeure says bank lending 'fully operational' in euro zone

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Euro zone banks are supplying credit to all corners of the bloc and the European Central Bank's upcoming round of cheap loans is merely designed to "protect" that channel, ECB board member Benoit Coeure said on Friday.

"Today, the bank lending channel in the euro area is fully operational after years of fragmentation," Coeure told an event in Paris.

"To protect this achievement, we decided at our last monetary policy meeting in March to launch a new series of targeted long-term refinancing operations, 'TLTRO-III', starting in September 2019."

(Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Balazs Koranyi)