It has taken place in a large number of areas, such as payment systems, supervision and financial stability, statistics, central bank operations, etc. Looking ahead, such technical assistance will continue to intensify as countries progress towards aligning themselves with EU regulations and directives.
I will turn to these in a minute. But there are also circumstances where central banks can and should help reduce perilous disparities, in particular when they threaten the effectiveness of our monetary policy. Our experience since 2014 illustrates this aspect well. Around that time, we faced a dangerous disparity in firms’ access to credit.