•  It is shielding from pressures arising from national authorities;  •  It allows continuous, multilateral check of time consistency and policy direction within the Council, thus imposing a discipline on monetary policy and  •  It is countering any public suspicion that national bias may inform policy decisions.
But let me say one more thing about Basel III: in this debate, it is important to have a clear view of the facts. The Basel III monitoring exercises and quantitative impact studies have given us a robust and granular overview.