* * * Mr Chairman, Honourable Members of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Ladies and gentlemen, It is a pleasure to be back speaking to your committee for the second regular hearing of this year. I am also pleased that you have chosen as the topic for today’s hearing the role of financial innovation.
More recently, the efforts undertaken by statistical agencies have intensified, spurred by the accelerated pace of technological innovation, which has yielded an ever-expanding range of new products and product variants, as well as by the rising share of these goods in our economic value added.