Other financial products, such as loans to households for house  BIS Review 40/2006  5  purchase, also show a significant cross-country standard deviation among the euro area countries. Obviously, further progress in retail banking integration is very much warranted. The same – I would say unsatisfactory – situation holds for the retail financial infrastructure.
In essence, monetary policy has its means (i.e. the framework) and its ends (i.e. macroeconomic objectives). When those two are congruent, the monetary policy framework is considered well-defined. Let’s go backwards here and have a look at the ends first. The universal aim of monetary policy is achieving price stability; a secondary aim of monetary policy may be growth.