However, uninterrupted exchange of data among different users must be enabled, without jeopardizing the confidentiality principle. A good example in this respect is the EU Regulation on European Statistics as of March, 2009, where statistical confidentiality is treated in the following manner: “Transmission of confidential data between an ESS authority that collected the data and an ESCB member may take place provided that this transmission is necessary for the efficient development, production and dissemination of European statistics or for increasing the quality of European statistics, within the respective spheres of competence of the ESS and the ESCB, and that this necessity has been justified.” Of course this stresses even more the importance of procedures for safeguarding the data confidentiality. The need for higher scrutiny, higher quality, additional dimensions do not refer only to statistics which I have touched upon above. The global crisis stressed the need to “reshape” economic data as well, as it came under higher public scrutiny as well. It means they are watched and used actively by policy-makers, financial markets and general public. The example of the excessive deficit procedure mechanism and the European Commission Macro Imbalance procedure, used to detect and correct macroeconomic imbalances on the basis of a scoreboard of indicators “are adding pressure on statisticians to deliver high quality data” (Gonzales-Paramo, 2012). This highlights the need and the importance of having excellent cooperation between central banks and national statistical offices.

As we all know, the global regulatory reform basically addresses the lessons learned from the crisis that insufficient capital and liquidity buffers, non-adequate on and off-balance sheet risk coverage and excessive leverage can undermine the stability of the financial system. The role of statistics in this regard is to improve the current statistical frameworks and to design new frameworks so as to provide adequate information for detecting vulnerabilities in the financial sector. Main venues in this regard are: redesign of the set of financial stability indicators to improve their value added for assessing the health of the financial systems, measurement of aggregate leverage and maturity mismatches, coverage of tail risks, more transparency about complex structured products and credit default swaps, and improvement of securities statistics. Adequate coverage of the unregulated institutions and instruments (the “shadow banking system”) seems also a key for having a complete risk-map. The need to supplement averages, with ranges and distribution was clearly demonstrated with the crisis. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  2. Cross-border financial links should be covered more properly within national financial stability assessments. In the world of fast growing financial integration and creation of large multinational financial groups, data on these networks are indispensible for a proper financial stability assessment within the country. Enhancement of information on systemically important global financial institutions, and initiating data gathering of crossborder flows seems to become a “must” nowadays for a proper assessment of the stability of national financial systems. 3.