BIS Review 39/2005  Before we can draw any conclusions from such surveys, however, we have to adjust these figures for transportation costs as well as differences in taxes and wage costs. Transportation accounts for only a few per cent of the final food price, and the differences in transportation costs between EU countries in turn are so small that they do not have any great significance for the price differences. Nor are transportation costs likely to be lower in Finland, for example, which has a lower price level than Sweden. The differences in VAT on food, however, are considerable. Swedish VAT on food is 12 per cent, and the general VAT rate is 25 per cent, while the rate is between 0 and 10 per cent in several comparable EU countries and just over 19 per cent on average in the EU15.5 If we adjust for the respective VAT rates, the differences in food prices between Sweden and other European countries turn out to be smaller, but the majority of comparable countries still have up to 10 per cent lower prices. In comparisons between Stockholm and other European capitals, too, the price difference averages roughly 10 per cent when VAT is excluded. Payroll taxes in Sweden are clearly higher than in many other countries; employers’ payroll taxes and social security contributions comprise around 15 per cent of GDP while the median in the EU15 is roughly 7 per cent.
I hope to be up to the task of the legacy you are leaving us. My thanks, too, to the members of the Bank’s Executive Commission and Governing Council and, most particularly, to the Deputy Governor, Javier Alonso. Javier, your help and far-reaching knowledge of the Bank are making these first weeks in the job easier for me. But, above all, I should like to thank my colleagues over the course of the years. It would be impossible to list them all; many are here today. The career of a Banco España employee can only fully be understood through the prism of the numerous interactions and discussions between us, which are the bedrock on which we build our knowledge and our particular human capital. It is a privilege to be part of this environment and to participate in such an enriching process. Finally, the most singular thanks are for my family. Without them none of this would have been possible. Let me seize this opportunity to refer briefly to what should, in my view, be the two main objectives of the Banco de España at this juncture and which are related to our relevance and reputation. The first has to do with our insertion into the Eurosystem and into the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Some think this means that the Banco de España has an increasingly diminished role, given that the main functions linked to monetary policy and supervision of the financial system are decided in that framework.