Under my chairmanship, a working committee composed of senior officers who are currently conducting a survey of the fees involved by payments and of the payments infrastructure. On the basis of the final report, which will probably appear in February 2002, the Nederlandsche Bank will make recommendations towards enhancing the efficiency and the competitive and innovative power of the Dutch payments system.
The Nederlandsche Bank will also contribute to the efficiency of payments by ensuring that the payments systems and securities transaction systems are secure and reliable. This task is called "oversight". And, last but not least, we come to supervision. As the supervisory task is purely a responsibility of the national authorities, the introduction of EMU has hardly had consequences for this task.