The primary initiatives include improved quality, coverage and timeliness of national statistics; improved accounting and audit standards; developing codes of good practice on transparency in fiscal, monetary and financial regulation policies; enhanced transparency within the operations of the major international financial institutions; and improved bankruptcy, corporate governance, insurance and securities regulation. It is mostly unspectacular, quite technical and thoroughly conventional.
In the public sector, gradual and continuous deleveraging has taken hold. The euro area has the lowest budget deficits and debt levels of the large advanced economies in the world. 3 Moreover, the divergence within the euro area has been reduced. At the European level, mechanisms that ensure public deleveraging have been strengthened.