In addition, the forthcoming revision of the Codified Banking Directive will provide a robust underpinning for greater cross-border cooperation among authorities, especially for large banking groups. The revised Directive will tighten the requirements for the information exchange and coordination between the consolidating supervisor and host supervisors. It will also assign the consolidating supervisor a coordinating role in the gathering and dissemination of information about the group as well as the planning and coordination of supervisory activities. Following these two major reforms, efforts should now focus on their effective implementation. As regards financial stability, there has been a significant increase in cross-border arrangements in response to the recommendations of the reports by the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) on financial stability and crisis management. The important role of the Financial Services Committee (FSC), which was responsible for monitoring the implementation of the EFC recommendations, should be fully acknowledged at this point. With regard to crisis management, the 2003 Memorandum of Understanding between EU banking supervisors and central banks, and to which the new EU Member States adhered in June 2004, was a great accomplishment. For the first time, principles for managing financial crises that may have a cross-border impact were agreed at EU level. Nevertheless, the Memorandum may be not sufficiently detailed to cover large cross-border banking groups comprising several authorities, where crisis management is particularly complex. Given the potential far-reaching implications of financial disturbances involving such groups, the development of group-specific agreements could be an important avenue to explore.
Here is Chancellor Denis Healey, writing in his memoirs3 about a spat with the Prime Minster of the day:  3  2  Healey, D (1989), The time of my life, Michael Joseph London. BIS Review 11/2004  ‘At this time my own relations with Jim were shaken by an incident just after the Party Conference. On October 6 I had asked him to let me raise interest rates by another 2 per cent to the then unprecedented level of 15 per cent…He refused. I said I wanted to take the matter to Cabinet that morning. ‘All right’ he replied ‘but I will not support you.’ Nevertheless I insisted…’ In the event this did not prove necessary: Callaghan backed down, leading Healey to comment wryly that ‘This was the only time I have ever used the threat of resignation to get my way.’ The new framework has taken the politics out of interest rate decisions without sacrificing democratic accountability or oversimplifying the policy process. It is an elegant institutional solution to the lengthy debate between those who favoured untrammelled discretion and those who advocated rules (such as monetary targets); one, moreover, which manages to respect the constitutional priorities of a parliamentary system. Achievements Performance over the six years since the Bank became independent has been impressive. Against the target of 2.5% for RPIX which ran from 1997 until December 2003, average inflation was 2.4%.