Therefore, it would not be appropriate to succumb to any siren songs urging the use of the current strong revenues to finance increases in expenditure. A structural weakening of the  BIS Review 138/2007  5  budgetary position will sow the seeds of a rapid deterioration in public finances when economic developments turn out to be less favourable than expected.
policy makers as well as compilers to reflect on the fact that reacting to changing societies does not only imply the development of new statistics but also a strong reflection on the need to maintain currently available “old” statistics. This phenomenon probably reflects the inertia of existing institutions and the resistance of national bureaucracies to transferring competences to the supranational level.