Dear Jean-Claude,

Let me start with a rather minor matter. Besides the press statement after the end of the meeting of the governing council to set interest rates, your predecessor Wim Duisenberg followed the habitual practice of holding an immediate press conference. I would suggest that you defer that press conference by some 24 hours. A meeting of the governing council is likely to be tense, often lengthy and almost always extremely fatiguing. As a result, you will face the world's media at