It occurred to me that I regard the EU as independent of the national governments (to a degree) and thus class both it and the ECB as similar independent entities which get on with it by themselves. Thus I was not especially considering whether the ECB is independent of the EU or not, that being irrelevant. Both are organisations which form part of the wider 'EU' which is what we have written about in this article, not simply the definition in the treaty on european union. My primary consideration is to what extent any of these organisations are independent of the member states, not of each other. My impression also was that the independence/non integration of the ECB with the EU had a lot to do with the way it evolved as an institution which states signed up to one by one, rather than as a EU whole.