Naturally, any such joint, and mutually beneficial, efforts are without prejudice to the distribution of responsibilities between the ECB and the NCBs. A great challenge for European institutions in general, and for the Eurosystem in particular, will be the forthcoming enlargement of the EU to take in 12 or more countries from central, eastern and southern Europe.
In purely institutional terms, the accession of new Member States entails an immediate enlargement of the ESCB, though not of the Eurosystem. However, since enlargement will be a gradual and seemingly open-ended process, it is obvious that the "Eurosystem" as an additional construct to clarify the relationships between the "ins" and the "outs" within the ESCB is here to stay for the foreseeable future.