to adhere to some critical factors. reasons for optimism first, our exercise needs to be more comprehensive than a standard stress test. in order for the comprehensive assessment to enjoy credibility, we must prove that we had deep insight into specific business areas, portfolios and individual credits as well as into processes and working guidelines. we must check whether accounting standards and workflows have been adhered to and ascertain whether the files of credit institutions faithfully reflect the contents of their systems. the comprehensive assessment is more comprehensive than any previous exercise – in terms of its scope and of the number of banks covered. we will examine in detail no less than 760 banking book portfolios. to reach our objective – to improve market confidence in euro area banks – it was essential to select more than 50 % of banks ’ portfolio exposure. the exercise would not have been seen as credible if a smaller set of portfolios had been selected. we will review some 135, 000 credit files. a total number of more than 6, 000 supervisors and auditors are currently conducting the review on the ground. for this review, we have and will collect vast amounts of data. i am aware that fulfilling our data requests puts quite a burden on banks, particularly the smaller institutions. we know that some of those face tighter constraints on the number of staff they can dedicate to specific tasks relating to the asset quality review ( aqr ) and that they may generally be less used to regular supervisory exercises such as the stress tests conducted by the european banking authority ( eba ). we did get some complaints which we take seriously. but even if we pare down our data requests to the essentials, we will still request tremendous amounts of data. bis central bankers ’ speeches by the way, let ’ s not trick ourselves – if there were no complaints at all, i would wonder whether we were doing a good job! and we need the data to do this job correctly. we need to stretch banks ’ and our own resources to the limit, not only to drill down to the detail, but also to allow for comparability. second, the two parts of this assessment complement each other : the aqr will give us a point - in - time picture of the state of banks ’ balance sheets. the aqr will ensure that the following stress test will be based on clean data, thus avoiding the weakness of the previous stress tests, in which the calculations were based on exposures valued only by the bank concerned.

me explain. the post - crisis economic recovery, while being subdued nearly everywhere, was faster in central and eastern european countries than in the western balkan economies. exporters from central and eastern europe were in a better position to take advantage of the recovery in global demand, due in part to their tighter integration in euro - area affiliated cross - border bis central bankers ’ speeches production chains. looking ahead, the dismantling of trade barriers between the western balkans and the eu should allow exporters in this region to also realise in full the advantages of vertical specialisation in international trade. this is one of the reasons why closer integration in europe will continue to be beneficial. another reason is that implementing the new eu governance framework will be key to prevent future macroeconomic imbalances in the member states. the so - called macroeconomic imbalance procedure explicitly monitors the emergence of internal and external macroeconomic imbalances. moreover, the existing stability and growth pact was strengthened, introducing earlier sanctions and more automatic enforcement procedures. it now needs to be implemented vigorously. not least, in the context of the on - going process of building the banking union the ecb has been granted supervisory powers. as you know, this will start in november next year, and will cover not only euro area banks, but also the banks of any non - euro area member state wishing to join the single supervisory mechanism through so - called enhanced cooperation. as part of the new powers, the ecb will monitor the financial soundness of banks and, in case of need, impose additional capital, liquidity and other prudential requirements. the completion of a comprehensive banking union with all necessary elements will be a milestone in the construction of the new european governance. it will also be of significance for countries in the entire region as in many of them the banking sector is dominated by euro area headquartered banks. 2. my second key policy lesson is that the process of economic and institutional convergence needs to be sustainable over the longer run. the fundamental logic of the eu treaty – with the convergence framework embedded in it – remains the right one. existing members, as well as candidate, and potential candidate countries have to make sure that they pursue sound policies. they should first and foremost focus on establishing sound fiscal and sustainable macroeconomic developments, and complement this with the necessary structural and institutional reforms including a strong framework for central bank independence. to support the process of institutional convergence, the ecb, together with national central banks of the eurosystem, has implemented