I would like to add that it should also be possible to examine the areas of our work that are not directly concerned with monetary policy. Openness is something that permeates Swedish public administration and is one of the keystones of our principle of free public access to official documents. It means that the authorities’ activities should as far as possible be carried out in an open form. This also applies to the Riksbank, of course. But there are other types of more "informal” accountability that are facilitated by our openness, credibility and independent position. The information from the Riksbank also makes easier the often fairly lively debate on monetary policy conducted in the media. Through our independent position and our openness, we create very good conditions for a debate without any great risk that our credibility will be chipped away. The possibilities for accountability even in this more informal way are thus fairly large. The Riksbank’s responsibility as an authority also makes other demands on our actions. This applies, for instance, to the forms for how we make our interest rate decisions and how we communicate our monetary policy intentions – what is usually called “signalling” in central bank language. Our interest rate decisions must be taken in what I would like to call a "correct procedure” and it is important that our principal – ultimately the general public – has insight into the decision-making process.
Persistent mass unemployment, the structural causes  3  BIS Review 55/2000  of which were poorly understood, had for a long time led to the adoption of certain Malthusian attitudes: wariness towards technical progress as it could potentially destroy jobs, the avoidance of productivity-enhancing investments thought to contribute to higher unemployment and, lastly, efforts to reduce the available work force with a view to sharing the same number of jobs between a smaller number of people. Having thus sought to limit technical progress, the available work force and the capital stock, it is not surprising that, despite the considerable progress in recent years, Europe and France have seen that their non-inflationary growth potential was still not as high as would have been desirable. In Europe and in France, we are seeing a profound change in perspective and are moving away from Malthusian attitudes. The Banque de France and the entire Eurosystem can be counted upon to support this change. This is why the Monetary Policy Council continues to make the following recommendations: in the interest of currency and price stability and therefore of robust growth, sustainable because it is non-inflationary and effective in combating unemployment, it is now more than ever the time to: –  invest and ease the constraints on capital. Investment is essential in our economy, in which the capacity utilisation rate currently stands at about 87% and 31% of firms are experiencing production bottlenecks.