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The Blue Book provides a comprehensive description of the main payment and securities settlement systems in EU Member States.
The August 2007 edition of the Blue Book consists of two volumes. Volume 1 comprises a chapter on the euro area and individual chapters for each euro area country. Volume 2 comprises individual chapters for each non-euro area country.
In the text edition, the euro area chapter and the individual country chapters follow a commonly agreed outline:
The descriptions cover both domestic and cross-border aspects of the systems. The range of schemes covered is not exhaustive and the selection is not intended to indicate their relative importance. The text edition is updated every few years.
By contrast with previous editions, the Blue Book published in August 2007 does not contain statistical annexes. The relevant statistical data can be found in the ECB’s Statistical Data Warehouse (SDW), in the “Payments and securities trading, clearing and settlement” sub-section of the “Economic concepts” section. The SDW also contains pre-formatted tables on payments statistics which present data in the same way as the old Blue Book Addendum publication. The tables contain data for the last five years and provide a convenient link to the full series, also available in the SDW.
The fourth edition of the Blue Book reflects the fundamental changes in payment and securities settlement systems between 2001 and 2006.
The first edition of the Blue Book was published in 1992 by the Committee of Governors of the Central Banks of the Member States of the European Economic Community. The second edition was published by the ECB’s predecessor, the European Monetary Institute (EMI), in April 1996. The third edition was published by the ECB in June 2001.
In 1999 and 2002 the ECB also prepared descriptions of the payment and securities settlement systems in the then accession countries in anticipation of their future EU membership.