The Eurosystem

This paper responds to some of the questions raised by Willem Buiter in his article 'Alice in Euroland' (CEPR Policy Paper No. 1) relating to the Eurosystem's approach to transparency and accountability. In his paper Willem Buiter makes a number of specific proposals designed to enhance the ECB's transparency and accountability. In his reply, Issing states that monetary policy-makers, like anybody else, have to filter, process and structure relevant information and interpret it on the basis of a coherent frame of reasoning. This is the purpose of adopting a monetary policy strategy that serves as a guide both for internal decision-making and for external communication with the public. Therefore, he argues, transparency and accountability need to be discussed against the background of the stability-oriented monetary policy strategy that the ECB has actually adopted and not as if it were pursuing some other strategy such as direct inflation targeting.