Moreover, independence enhances a central bank’s credibility to keep inflation in check, facilitating its task by orienting the expectations and behaviour of economic agents towards price stability.

- Lastly, realism and pragmatism in the assessment of a financial and economic environment changing rapidly, due to new technologies, changes in the behaviour of economic agents and the general economic and financial globalisation trend.

But dramatic failures such as Enron or WorldCom have revealed how the financial system distorts the way economic agents behave.

This is essential if one considers that monetary policy is now, more than ever before, effective above all through the channel of the expectations of the financial markets, which have a considerable influence on the behaviour of the economic players.

91. The CFI dismissed the application by stating, inter alia, that there was no legal precedent suggesting that the notion of "economic links" was restricted to the notion of structural links between the undertakings concerned: According to the CFI, "there is no reason whatsoever in legal or economic terms to exclude from the notion of economic links the relationship of interdependence existing between the parties to a tight oligopoly within which, in a market with the appropriate characteristics, in particular in terms of market concentration, transparency and product homogeneity, those parties are in a position to anticipate one anothe ...[+++]r's behaviour and are therefore strongly encouraged to align their conduct in the market, in particular in such a way as to maximise their joint profits by restricting production with a view to increasing prices.

(18) Information society services span a wide range of economic activities which take place on-line; these activities can, in particular, consist of selling goods on-line; activities such as the delivery of goods as such or the provision of services off-line are not covered; information society services are not solely restricted to services giving rise to on-line contracting but also, in so far as they represent an economic activity, extend to services which are not remunerated by those who receive them, such as those offering on-line information or commercial communications, or those providing tools allowing for search, access and re ...[+++]trieval of data; information society services also include services consisting of the transmission of information via a communication network, in providing access to a communication network or in hosting information provided by a recipient of the service; television broadcasting within the meaning of Directive EEC/89/552 and radio broadcasting are not information society services because they are not provided at individual request; by contrast, services which are transmitted point to point, such as video-on-demand or the provision of commercial communications by electronic mail are information society services; the use of electronic mail or equivalent individual communications for instance by natural persons acting outside their trade, business or profession including their use for the conclusion of contracts between such persons is not an information society service; the contractual relationship between an employee and his employer is not an information society service; activities which by their very nature cannot be carried out at a distance and by electronic means, such as the statutory auditing of company accounts or medical advice requiring the physical examination of a patient are not information society services.