To me, it means more than that: it means being fully committed to creating a more integrated retail payments market in Europe, enabling competition and innovation, and in general making retail payments more efficient, safer and easier to use. People may wonder why, at a time of unprecedented financial turmoil, we continue to focus our attention and energy on payment issues.
Subsequently, detailed guidelines were issued to ensure banks’ compliance with these standards in April 2004. These improvements will further align our accounting practices with those prevailing internationally. I would like to highlight in this context the emerging importance of the accounting profession in view of the impending implementation of Basel-II framework for capital adequacy.