This independence has and will continue to serve the ECB and the European public well. Second, institutional independence is necessarily accompanied with transparency and accountability. An independent institution is, at last resort, accountable to the general public in a modern democracy.
Transparency also improves the public’s understanding of how the ECB conducts monetary policy, thereby fostering a better understanding of its objective and improving the predictability of its decisions, both factors that help to make monetary policy much more effective -- actually, several studies and research papers have shown that the ECB is among the most predictable central banks in the world.