I believe that separation will not adversely affect their robustness; on the contrary, after the implementation of the reform of the capital market, the developments in the financial system, and in particular in the banking system, will lead to the creation of incentives to the emerging banks to find ways to strengthen their ability to compete with the big banks, including via mergers.
There is growing evidence that most countries will miss their budgetary targets for 2003 by a significant margin and, in a number of cases, budgetary plans for 2004 are not reassuring. While the deterioration of budgetary balances mainly reflects the lower-than-anticipated economic growth, it is worrying to see that not all countries with severe imbalances have so far introduced sufficient consolidation measures.