EN
OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
of 30 August 2001
at the request of the Belgian Minister of Fina nce on a draft law on the compilation of the
balance of payments and the in ternational investment position  of Belgium and amending the
Decree Law of 6 October 1944 on foreign exchange cont rols and various legal provisions
(CON/2001/23)
1. On 24 July 2001, the European Central Bank (ECB) received a request from the Belgian
Minister of Finance for an opi nion on a draft law on the compilation of the balance of payments
and the international investment position of  Belgium and amending the Decree Law of
6 October 1944 on foreign exchange controls and various legal provisions.
2. The ECBs competence to deliver an opinion is based on the second indent of Article 105(4) of
the Treaty establishing the European Community (h ereinafter referred to as the Treaty), the
second indent of Article 4(a) of the Statute of the European Syst em of Central Banks and of the
European Central Bank (hereinafter referred to  as the Statute), and on the third and fourth
indents of Article 2(1) of Council Decision 98/415/EC of 29 June 1998 on the consultation of
the European Central Bank by national authorities regarding draft legislative provisions1, as the
legislative proposal contains provisions concer ning the collection, compilation and distribution
of monetary, financial, banking, payment systems and balance of payments statistics by theNationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique. In accordance with the first sentenceof Article 17.5 of the Rules of Procedure of th e ECB, this opinion has been adopted by the
Governing Council of the ECB.
3. The main purpose of the draft law is to entrust to the Nationale Bank van België/Banque
Nationale de Belgique from 1 January 2002 the task of collecting the appropriate basic dataenabling it to compile statistics related to Belgiums balance of payments and international
investment position. The Nationale Bank van Belg ië/Banque Nationale de Belgique would thus
assume responsibility for the statistical work currently performed by an institution common to
Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Belgisch-Luxemburgs
                                                          
1OJ L 189, 3.7.1998, p. 42.
2Wisselinstituut/Institut belgo-luxembourgeois du change, which the Belgian and Luxembourg
Governments have decided to abolish when th e reason for the monetary association between
the two countries has ceased to exist with the introduction of euro banknotes and coins on1 January 2002.
4. As a general observation, the ECB notes that the innovations introduced by the draft law relate
mainly to the explicit reference, on the one hand, to the international investment position of
Belgium as such, while this was previously consid ered to be a statistic ancillary to the balance
of payments, and, on the other hand, to the participation by the Nationale Bank vanBelgië/Banque Nationale de Belgique in the Eu ropean System of Cent ral Banks (ESCB). As a
consequence, the restrictive list of authorised uses  of data collected specifies that this is without
prejudice to compliance with the obligations re lating to duties in respect of the ESCB. The
ECB welcomes this clarification and notes that th e draft law in this respect does not give rise to
any specific remarks.
5. Article 4 of the draft law, which provides that the individual information collected shall be used
by the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique for the purposes ofestablishing the balance of payments and th e international investment position of Belgium,
specifies the restrictive conditions under which th is information can be disclosed, notably with
respect to third parties. Article 4(5) of the dr aft law provides, however, for a limit to statistical
secrecy in the two specific cases of money laundering and financial embargo measures. Thedraft law provides in particular that the compul sory regulations issued in order to implement
financial embargo measures will take precedence ov er the principle of statistical secrecy, which
implies that the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique will have tocommunicate information in its possession to the competent authority in charge of monitoring
compliance with financial embargo measures.
6. The ECB is of the view that Article 4(5) of th e draft law does not imply any infringement of the
confidentiality regime as defined in Council Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 of23 November 1998 concerning the co llection of statistical informa tion by the European Central
Bank
2. Article 8(5)(c) of the abovementioned Regu lation allows national central banks to use
the confidential statistical in formation collected to fulfil the ECBs statistical reporting
requirements exclusively for the exerci se of the tasks of the ESCB, except  if it is used in the
field of prudential supervision or for the exer cise in accordance with Article 14(4) of the
Statute of functions other than those specified in the Statute.  In addition, the principle of
statistical secrecy is further strengthened by Artic le 5(2) of the draft law, which reinforces the
standards of confidentiality applying to th e entire staff of the Nationale Bank van
België/Banque Nationale de Belgique in the fiel d of statistics. The obligations imposed by law
on the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale  de Belgique, when it acts as a collector of
                                                          
2OJ L 318, 27.11.1998, p. 8.
3statistical information relating to capital transfers to zones affected by an embargo, are not
regarded by the ECB as falling w ithin the statistical functions of the ESCB. As a result, the
ECB would welcome a clarification in the draft la w further specifying that such obligations are
not related to the statistical pur pose of ESCB reporting requirements.
7. The ECB confirms that it has no objection to the publication of this opini on at the discretion of
the competent national authorities.
Done at Frankfurt am Main on 30 August 2001.
The President of the ECB
[signed]
Willem F. DUISENBERG