, one thing is of particular importance, and that is congruence. this means the congruence of sensible structures and regulations with sound internal practices and vice versa. and transparency can help achieve this. how gratifying it is, then, that jan hommen recently also marked these terms as overarching principles for the philips corporate policy. he did so, not only for financial reporting, but also, if i understand correctly, for the governance structure in general. and as you will understand from my speech, i would like to congratulate philips on these outstanding principles and jan hommen on his undoubtedly large contribution to their development. ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

. but the report set out important principles about a company´s risk management and necessary checks and balances. its recommendations were based on the coso - framework, an internal control framework of global standing. the peters report was, in fact, the first dutch code of corporate governance. it gave an impulse to the development of explicit requirements on good governance for banks. how? well, in 1999 dnb issued its regulation on organisation and control or roc. in drafting the roc, we used the governance framework of the peters report as its backbone. so in addition to risk management requirements, this regulation includes checks and balances for the managing and supervisory boards of banks. for example, the roc requires all banks to establish an audit committee function involving knowledgeable and independent supervisory board members. all banks, you may wonder? yes, we require such an audit committee function for all, but we allow smaller institutions to meet this requirement within their limited capabilities. this is an example of a principle - based regulation which allows congruence with reality. it will come as no surprise that the second dutch code on corporate governance, the tabaksblat code, contains many of the same aspects as dnb´s roc, since both are based on the same source. the same goes for some papers of the international basel committee on banking supervision, in which we were again able to integrate the peters committee´s recommendations. oversight promotes a level playing field this leads us to an important purpose of public oversight. i refer to the aspect of promoting a level playing field. maintaining a level playing field requires not only adequate regulations but also transparent supervision. you will agree with me that supervising an organisation that applies good governance will differ strongly from supervising an organisation that applies bad governance. supervisory action towards supervised organisations can have direct or indirect benefits for those who apply good governance. in that sense supervision is in the corporation´s as well as in the public interest. transparency i have just mentioned transparency as an important aspect of supervision. it is beneficial for enforcement purposes. after all, it is important for supervised organisations to know what our enforcement instruments are and when we will use them. an important new development here results from the revised european directive on banking capital requirements. this directive adopts the new basel ii capital framework for european legislative purposes. it also requires supervisory disclosures from all european competent authorities - a development which we support actively. so in future everybody will be able to compare the supervisory level playing field for banks through the websites of the european banking supervisors.