I would like to express my appreciation to the promoters of the STEP exercise and would like to encourage them to keep up the momentum for the last stage, as the first STEP-labelled programme is expected in early 2006. Government bond market Let me now turn to the bond markets, where I would like to begin with the government bond market.
Government bond markets have achieved a very high degree of integration, mainly due to the disappearance of intra-euro area exchange rate risk. Since then, government bond yields in different euro area countries have been driven exclusively by euro area-wide factors and news, and by the appreciation of the risk inherent to the various signatures of the Governments concerned.