Conversely, the insights gained in contact with the banking industry in the practical conduct of refinancing operations and in payments are helpful to the banking supervisors. These synergy effects quite certainly played a part in the Eurosystem being able to take early, resolute and successful countermeasures when the distribution of liquidity among the banks was no longer functioning as normal.
In terms of the distribution of powers among the institutions, it is therefore sensible to have the national central banks closely integrated into banking supervision. And I am, of course, also glad to say that the success of central bank operations since August 2007 has certainly not been due just to the efficient division of labour among various institutions.