Third, this progress has been possible thanks to excellent cooperation within Europe’s statistical community, which consists of national central banks (NCBs), national statistical institutes (NSIs), Eurostat and the ECB.
In particular, I would like to pay tribute to the Statistics Committee of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the European Committee for Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments statistics (CMFB) for the very fruitful role they play. In fact, since I last addressed this audience, in April 2004, significant progress has been made, although also still much remains to be done.