the first step report. and, finally, ecb staff have contributed to the work of the euribor aci step task force since its creation. the eurosystem will also provide operational support to the functioning of the step market. in july 2004, the governing council of the ecb discussed the recommendations addressed to the european system of central banks in the final report of the euribor aci step task force. the governing council welcomed the step initiative and took a favourable attitude towards its aim to ease the convergence of standards and to foster the integration of the fragmented european short - term paper markets through a market - led initiative. specifically, the governing council decided to support, in principle, the activities pertaining to the introduction of a step label, which will acknowledge the adoption of the step standards, for the first two years after its launch. the step secretariat, which will be created and managed by the european banking federation, will perform the step labelling with the support of the eurosystem and, in particular, of several of its national central banks. such a technical contribution to the labelling process would, however, not lead to a national central bank taking any action, such as the prohibition or suspension of issuance, in the event of non - compliance by an issuer with the convention ’ s requirements. in such a case, the only consequence would be that the step secretariat would withdraw the step label from the issuance programme in question. moreover, the governing council of the ecb decided, subject to a final check regarding the efficiency of the collection process, to accept the request put forward in the euribor aci step task force report, to produce and publish step statistics on yields and volumes on an ongoing basis, which would foster integration and reduce issuers ’ costs through greater market transparency. i have the pleasure to inform you today that the work of the ecb and the national central banks in this respect is well advanced. just a few days ago, the governing council has approved the so - called efficiency check, i. e. the assessment of the costs and benefits related to the production of step statistics, and decided that the eurosystem will indeed produce such statistics. now, after a long preparatory phase, the urgent priority is to complete the step market convention, which is the cornerstone of the whole project and the last step to be overcome to achieve its successful completion. i am confident that the promoters of the initiative, foremost the aci, will find the necessary drive

form of exchange rate peg and managed float intervene regularly so as to ensure that the respective exchange rate is consistent with the chosen regime. in conducting such interventions, they prefer to use the anchor currency which then also serves as their main reserve currency. today, roughly 50 countries use the euro as an anchor or reference currency in their exchange rate policies. while the composition of this group of countries has changed somewhat in recent years, the total number of countries has been stable. indeed, the use of the euro in third countries ’ exchange rate regimes has a strong geographical and institutional underpinning, with many of these countries being close to the euro area, including most non - euro area eu member states, or having special institutional arrangements with the european union, like the candidate countries, potential candidate countries and the countries of the cfa franc zone in west africa. overall, most of these countries are located in eastern and south - eastern europe, in the mediterranean and the middle east and sub - saharan africa. with regard to the use of the euro as a reserve currency, you are probably all aware that the relevant data are extremely difficult to obtain. what we do know is that from 1999 to 2003, global foreign exchange reserves rose by more than usd 1. 3 trillion to about usd 3 trillion. by far the largest share of this increase is attributable to reserve accumulation in a few countries in asia as well as in japan, russia and mexico. these are countries which conduct an exchange rate policy which is either de jure or de facto oriented towards the us dollar. from this development, it could be inferred that most of the reserve accumulation probably pertained to the us dollar. against this background, and bearing in mind that most countries near the euro area are small in economic and financial terms ( compared with asian and latin american countries ), it is no great surprise that the euro ’ s share in global foreign exchange reserves is still rather small, although it has risen gradually from roughly 15 % to almost 20 %. available evidence suggests that several central banks of the new eu member states, candidate and potential candidate countries intervene in foreign exchange markets mainly by using the euro as intervention currency. my final remark in this overview of the facts and figures relates to one specific international use of the euro : in certain countries neighbouring the euro area, the euro is used in parallel alongside the national currency, as a means of exchange, unit of account and store of value in people ’ s everyday transactions. in the past,