In a speech three days ago, 2 I reviewed the recent Commission proposals from  1  The European Statistical System is the partnership between the statistical authority of the European Union, namely the Commission (Eurostat), and the national statistical institutes and other national authorities in each Member State that are responsible for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics.
Consistent with this observation, my comments today will not be on the immediate outlook for euro area monetary policy. Instead I will dwell on some issues that are – to a large extent – topical in discussions on central banking around the world.