An important part of Tommaso’s work, before and at the European Central Bank, was to help establish both independence and accountability as part of a central bank’s profile. The two form a critical pair, he thought, with the latter naturally complementing the former. The independence of the Eurosystem is a means to an end.
It is instrumental in achieving the objective of price stability assigned to the central bank of the euro by the Treaty, which has deliberately established both the primacy of price stability and the principle of independence of the central bank.