are effective indicators of the scale of the continuing dislocation of the abs market and the vanishing of private markets. however, it should be obvious to everyone that the issuance of abs only to serve as collateral with central banks cannot be a sustainable strategy for the abs market. in normal times central bank operations are intrinsically of a short - term nature and of a limited size, and are designed to implement the stance of monetary policy. by contrast, abs transactions backed by residential and commercial property loans have much longer maturities and must cover a very sizeable market. in other words, in normal times central banks tend to have a very limited involvement in financial intermediation and only private investors have the capacity and the need to offer long - term funding to originators. what are the more recent trends? some developments in the last few months may be interpreted as showing tentative signs of a recovery as new abs issues were distributed and placed with private investors. moreover, the volume of placed assets during the first five months of 2010 outpaced the combined placed volumes in 2008 and 2009. these tentative positive signals are confirmed by the european abs investor confidence index by jp morgan, which has remained in positive territory for the last nine months. our own bank lending survey indicates that for the first quarter of 2010, banks generally reported that their access to wholesale funding became easier. 1 in addition, after a broadly neutral evaluation of true - sale securitisation access for corporate and housing loans in the fourth quarter of 2009, banks assessed the situation as significantly more positive, in particular for the securitisation of housing loans. it should be noted, however, that this survey was conducted before the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis. while all these indications may suggest that demand for abss is re - emerging, we still need confirmation from the data over the next months. moreover, the latter developments represent an improvement but are still far from normal market conditions, or even from suggesting that we may be moving towards such conditions. iv. how do we bring back investors ’ confidence? taking the stock of the latest information, one should recognise that euro area securitisation markets remain dysfunctional, mainly for demand - side related reasons. and, of course, the malfunctioning of the market has implications also for the supply - side. on the demand side, the investor base has been and remains severely eroded and many earlier active investors, such as sivs and money market funds, are not expected to return to

- month phasing - in period – in line with the feedback received in the public consultation – would be sufficient for originators and issuers to adapt their systems to provide the required data. it should be noted that the eurosystem ’ s initiative on loan level data is in line with certain amendments introduced by the second capital requirements directive ( “ crd ii ” ) that will enter into effect on 1 january 2011. amongst other things, crd ii provides that the sponsor or the originator must ensure that investors and prospective investors have readily available access to all materially relevant data on credit quality and performance of the individual underlying exposures. thus, crd ii views information on individual underlying exposures ( i. e. loan - level data ) as necessary for investors to be able to make reasoned investment decisions. however, i want also to make clear that, along with policy initiatives, the structured finance industry has an essential role in restarting the european securitization markets and setting them on a sounder footing. the industry cannot realistically expect that the return of investors ’ confidence will be just a question of time and implementing regulatory action. likewise, certainly confidence will not be restored by introducing minor changes to the instruments and the functioning of the markets. on the contrary, confidence in securitization will return among private as well as public stakeholders only if market participants and their associations are able to materially enhance market standards and practices. let me stress also that the industry cannot expect public authorities to accept merely cosmetic changes to the instruments and the markets. this, for example, applies to the eurosystem ’ s collateral framework. in a context in which outstanding abs represent almost 25 % of the total collateral deposited by counterparties with the eurosystem, it is imperative for the eurosystem to be prepared to perform a proper assessment of risks whenever needed. in this context, loan - level information will enable ratings agencies to produce meaningful surveillance reports, which could in turn help the eurosystem to diligently assess the risks implied by the collateral accepted in our refinancing operations. industry - led initiatives aimed at revitalising the european securitisation market are inspired by high level principles, which typically meet immediate consensus. however, when these principles are transposed into specific provisions in some market convention, consensus becomes less easy to reach. in fact, aligning all the stakeholders ’ incentives often proves to be difficult and there is the risk of only reaching a very low