Or we could think about the possibility of establishing “safe hubs” of granular information where data from different institutions are shared with every guarantee of retaining statistical secrecy and confidentiality. By way of example, in some Nordic countries there is a consortium of public institutions which share their data not only with their own analysts but also with the scientific community. It would also be worth strengthening the possibilities of having access to administrative registers of other institutions and to allow the matching of different databases. The value of micro datasets increases exponentially when they can be combined, including the granular information of one dataset in the observations of another. The amount of research  5  possibilities here is really huge. Therefore, we should make every effort to achieve these types of dataset combinations, through the above-mentioned “safe hubs”, through a consortium or by any other means. Another related issue is the importance of providing all the observations making up a given register. A large amount of observations is by itself important, as it allows the study of specific groups of agents with sufficient accuracy. But it is also crucial when it comes to merging different datasets. If an administrative register is reduced to some sub-set of observations, then the chances of finding the same agents in a different dataset decrease dramatically. This is of particular importance in the case of surveys containing important information to be merged with some registers. Surveys usually have a much smaller sample size.
Indeed, as part of the Eurosystem, as a participant in the Single Supervisory Mechanism and given its responsibility for the proper functioning and stability of the financial system, the Banco de España regularly collects a wealth of financial and supervisory information from credit institutions, which is key to performing all our duties. This information is also necessary for strengthening the performance of other functions of the Banco de España, such as the conduct of monetary policy, the oversight of the stability of the financial system and the compilation of statistics. We are also responsible for designing financial reporting as efficiently as possible and, in this endeavour, both the Banco de España and the European authorities have some substantial challenges ahead. I shall refer to these later. Some of the key statistics produced by the Banco de España are present in the Spanish National Statistical Plan (the PEN, as we refer to it). They include some macroeconomic statistics, such as the balance of payments and the financial accounts, which complement and have to be consistent with those compiled by INE. In this regard, I think we can be proud of the long-standing tradition of close and candid cooperation between our two institutions. Joint discussion continuously enriches our professionals, and their efforts to ensure the consistency and complementarity of the results are a guarantee of the quality of the statistical system.