into the consolidation stage, our banking systems still remain fragile, and as such, they require greater commitment and care. regardless statistical developments, the scale of financial intermediation is relatively low, whereas time after time the shadow of shocks on the economic equilibra shows up itself in different countries. future changes will not be simple at all, but all of us together, by exchanging experiences and necessities for change, will build a safer environment, which i hope will make future challenges somewhat easier. granting independence to central banks represents one of the most relevant steps in the financial system reform in the countries of our region, as an important precondition for maintaining inflation under control and becoming an escb member. however, our endeavours for the consolidation of the institutional and real independence should be coordinated carefully by taking into consideration the specific features of our economies in transition, and not as a mere implementation of what may seem to be a successful model for the escb countries. in this framework, i consider today ’ s meeting as very important, since the bulgarian economy and the bulgarian national bank have been going through substantial reforms in the context of eu accession. i believe that the challenges that we have faced and those that we will face in the future are more or less the same with those experienced by the bulgarian authorities, including the bulgarian national bank. as a consequence, i think that the bilateral cooperation between our banks carries a high potential, and in the name of my institution, i avail myself of this opportunity to offer maximal guarantees with regard to the fruitful development of these relations. 1 / 2 passing into a multilateral framework, i will return once more to the idea that focuses on the institutionalisation of the inter - regional cooperation between central banks. if we look to the meetings organised with some of the regional banking authorities, the initiative on regional cooperation has been welcomed, but i also believe that time has come to carry out concrete measures towards this cooperation. judging from my personal experience, not as governor but as a banker, i hold the opinion that it would be appropriate to establish a club of regional central banks. the regular meetings of this club would certainly enable the exchange of experiences and the further strengthening of our cooperation. 2 / 2

banks and academia during the last 4 years. the results of this research and analysis have taken central banks and their monetary and regulatory policies beyond what was considered sacred limits of monetary policy. however, this has not proven very helpful for the economy. it is now five years since the crisis began and the more authorities deal with short - term problems of growth and unemployment, the more they reveal long - term imbalances and structural problems of national and global scale. in the meantime, we still cannot fully define, understand and model the economy in its true stochastic form. typically, long and deep economic and social crisis have become the breeding ground of new philosophies of economic thinking, which, in turn, have encouraged significant policy changes and opened the road to economic prosperity. adam smith, john keynes, milton friedman, and their economic thinking have emerged in the dusk of big crisis. unfortunately, we are still waiting for a new philosophy ; so the question arises : where is our philosopher? we clearly need a new way of thinking, a new approach to economic policy, a lot of new ideas. these new ideas are not easily discovered. they do not pop up themselves ; they hide in the layers of economic and financial data, history of economic developments and economic thought, and philosophy of social interaction in the macro and microeconomic scale. it is not surprising that economists and politicians have started to challenge some beliefs that are regarded as universal economic truths. for example, gdp and growth are challenged as the best measure of happiness and prosperity, globalization is challenged for its externalities in the labour market and inequality, inequality itself is under investigation as a potential culprit of economic slowdown. economic research must broaden its scope to consider all these areas in their work. research must be designed like an increasing spiral, where the newly gained knowledge in philosophy, economic history, empiric research and application of mathematic and statistical models must return to the starting point to confront the set of all new and old problems, prove the generality of its application, and evaluate the set of potential externalities. as i mentioned at the beginning, this is the 100th jubilee of albania ’ s independence and our annual conference this year focused on the development of monetary policy during the last bis central bankers ’ speeches 100 years and paid particular attention to the impact that domestic and international political and economic events have had on the nature of the central bank and its monetary policy. addressing the mixture of historic and economic developments, the large