The three consortium members have completed many successful twinning projects in the financial sector and have gained a sound project management capacity. We have strongly committed ourselves to this project for various reasons. We are encouraged by the progress achieved by the financial supervision authorities in Montenegro in bringing financial sector regulation closer to the EU requirements. Also, there are many signs of already built cooperation with the Montenegrin authorities that need further strengthening. Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Montenegro are in the same IMF constituency  BIS Review 168/2009  1  which has created good mutual knowledge of their economies and fostered long-term cooperation on financial issues. We consider our experience relevant to Montenegro not only because of the scale of the economy, but also because of the similarities of the supervisory structures. In the accession process we have learnt several major lessons. Bulgaria did not ask for any transitional periods or derogations concerning the banking sector acquis communautaire. Furthermore, all EU directives in this sector were transposed in time and most of them long before the deadlines. This approach has turned to be a success since the early adoption of the EU rules in financial supervision contributed to the smooth functioning of the financial market and fostered the stability of the financial system. One of the main keys to the smooth transition in the accession process is the cooperation between the institutions involved in financial regulation and supervision.
The respect for the independence of financial supervision authorities and the cooperation between them is an important indicator for the preparedness for EU accession. I would like to emphasise in particular the requirement for institutional financial and personal independence of the central bank as stipulated in article 130 of the Lisbon Treaty. Let me now turn to the challenges ahead of our project. First of all, the EU response to the crisis envisages fundamental changes in both the legal and institutional frameworks of financial regulation. Most of the EU directives and regulations are currently being changed. (Mr. Simeonov will talk about these later) This is a challenge for our project, and I would like to suggest that we take into consideration the latest EU acquis communautaire in our joint work. That is why we included in our team the experts who are members of the EU committees and working groups in the area of financial supervision, including the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, Economic and Financial Committee, Financial Services Committee, Committee of European Securities Regulators, where all these novelties are constructed. This will help the project to benefit from the most recent developments in the EU financial supervision policies and legal framework. The other challenge is related with the ongoing crisis which calls for an immediate response from the national authorities and is of utmost importance. Therefore, I believe we have to focus our activities as much as possible on helping the Montenegrin authorities in addressing the challenges of the crisis.