This may be more difficult to achieve for international tools that require agreement between multiple national policy makers. Macroprudential policy needs to be operational soon It is therefore clear that vulnerabilities are emerging as countries recover from the crisis and it is important that national authorities are soon able to implement macroprudential policies to address those risks. Leading the development of formalised macroprudential policy arrangements are the European Systemic Risk Board, which will hold its inaugural meeting in just two days, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council in the US, which held its first meeting in October 2010. But many other countries are thinking seriously about how to implement and conduct macroprudential policy in their jurisdictions. Governance arrangements for macroprudential policy A vital aspect of the macroprudential policy framework will be the design of the governance arrangements. They will determine how the different elements of the framework are brought together and will influence how macroprudential policy interacts with other policy areas. Governance arrangements should be effective in three broad areas; they must ensure that the macroprudential decision-maker (the “macroprudential agency”) has: (i) a clear mandate;  managed to avoid the fiscal consolidation currently seen in many other EU countries. One reason for Sweden’s robust public finances is that it had to implement a programme of fiscal consolidation in the mid1990s, following the Swedish banking crisis.
However, this seems to reinforce their conviction that regional cooperation is necessary to achieve stable and non-inflationary growth and to overcome latent economic conflicts with their trading partners. As in the case of the regional process of integration in Europe, it may well be that the final objective of the Mercosur regional agreement goes beyond that of trade cooperation. The international community should support regional cooperation efforts among countries that have strong trade relationships and are willing to achieve progress in economic convergence. These efforts have significant positive externalities and could contribute to greater effectiveness of multilateral and bilateral surveillance. The exchange rate of the euro To complete the picture of the international role of the euro, let me finally refer to the exchange rate of the euro vis-à-vis other major currencies, namely the US dollar and the Japanese yen. I should like to take the opportunity to reaffirm that the ECB does not pursue any exchange rate target in its stability-oriented monetary policy strategy. Our objective is to maintain stable prices in the euro area and not a specific level of the euro’s exchange rate. According to our strategy, the exchange rate of the euro is the outcome of current and expected economic policies pursued in the euro area, and economic developments in both the euro area and abroad. Conclusions To summarise, the new institutional monetary setting in Europe has consequential implications for international capital markets and international policy cooperation.