It is therefore imperative that national efforts to determine the extent of money laundering must be improved as these statistics are important for convincing the legislative and political processes on the need for legislative changes necessary for effective combating of money laundering.
In doing so, I will occasionally refer to the history of my own institution, the Deutsche Bundesbank. However, in most of cases, I shall focus on the independence of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) in order to give you specific examples from the present day. Over the past few decades, a well-founded consensus has emerged about the nature of sound monetary policy.