Recent attempts made to construct measures of central bank independence using different criteria and examine correlations among them reveal that the factors that affect central bank independence are highly diverse and the importance of each of these factors may have weights that vary markedly across countries, time and circumstances.
Second, apart from Croatia, none of the other countries under review complies with all economic convergence criteria. In five of the seven Member States examined in the report, HICP inflation is well above the reference value. The long-term interest rate is above the reference value in two countries and well above it in one country.