In 2004, Basel II ushered in an era of technical standards that not only ran into hundreds of pages but also included numerous calculation formulas and tables. And I daren’t mention the annexes or background papers. The reforms following the financial crisis intensified this trend further still.
It is worth noting that the new National Collective Labour Agreement provides for average annual increases in minimum wages of 6.2% in 2008 and 5.7% in 2009, higher than under the previous two-year agreement (6.2% for 2006 and 5.4% for 2007). Therefore, the rise envisaged for this year is higher than the one in 2007.