IMF involvement will be sought for the design and monitoring of conditionality. The OMTs are an instrument in the ECB’s toolbox to help it fulfil its mandate, maintaining price stability. They will be conducive to the monetary authority restoring its power to control credit conditions in the euro area and, through that channel, inflation in the medium term. 3.2. Government actions to fight the crisis  Ultimately, however, the current crisis is the result of the lack of incentives in the Maastricht Treaty to pursue sound fiscal, economic and financial market policies. This can only be amended by the Member States, not by the ECB. The key to resolving the crisis thus lies first and foremost with governments, individually and jointly. Since the start of the crisis, the Member States have adopted a number of important measures to strengthen the institutional framework of EMU. A procedure for the surveillance of excessive macroeconomic imbalances has been established in order to detect and correct divergences at an early stage. In the case of non-adherence to agreed fiscal and economic rules, sanctions will be applied in a more automatic manner to reduce the potential for political interference and delay in the process. Further improvements are currently under consideration, such as the mandatory submission of draft national budgets to the group of euro area finance ministers – the so-called “Eurogroup” – for vetting before those budgets are submitted to national parliaments for adoption.
For example, should central banks more explicitly incorporate considerations of financial stability into their policies than they do today? If so, how? To what extent would the extension of their roles be compatible with their independence or even with their mandates to ensure price stability? 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The reform of the international monetary system will be the central theme of the last session that will take the form of a roundtable chaired by Martin Wolf. I am particularly grateful to Bill White for accepting the difficult task of drawing a summary of our symposium which is bound to be both dense and captivating. I would like to hand the floor to Axel Weber to chair the first session, and, once again, I would like to thank all the eminent personalities who have agreed to participate in this symposium. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3