Finally, the balancing of the accounts between the financial side and the non-financial side under the joint responsibility of Eurostat and the ECB truly represents a challenge of historic dimension. The remaining discrepancies for the household and non-financial corporations sectors provide a measure of additional efforts needed in reconciling the accounts.
As I have stressed before, the national accounts are useful not only as a framework for putting together what we know, but also for identifying what we do not yet know and for pointing to gaps and inconsistencies in the primary data. Much of this is work in progress.