While expanding, it has to be ensured that the ECB remains an efficient organisation. What is more, the role of the ECB, as the central bank representing the second largest economic area of the world with a population of 300 million people, has to be shaped and elaborated further. Setting up the ECB is a fascinating process.
It is like the European integration process itself, but on a micro scale and under very great pressure of time. In some respects, the process of establishing and consolidating the ECB and the Eurosystem could serve as an example for the European integration process in a wider sense. The Eurosystem will have to explain time and again what monetary policy can and cannot do.