Editorial
In this Working Paper, Eduard Hochreiter, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and Tadeusz Kowalski from the University of Poszan, analyze the institutional framework of central banks in ten Central and East European countries in the 1990s using the ECB as benchmark. The paper looks at the legislated objectives of these central banks, assesses the degree of political and functional independence and the status of their democratic legitimization and accountability.
We find that while much progress has been made in making the statutes “Maastricht compatible”, all of them will have to be adapted once again before EMU entry. The legislation provides for democratic accountability comparable to that of the ESCB. Moreover, in recent years the enacted limitations of fiscal financing have become more binding. Yet, rescue operations in the financial sector that occurred in some of the studied countries might be seen as encroaching the independence of the respective central bank.