Terminology

In 2009, the ECB issued Glossary of terms related to payment, clearing and settlement systems (pdf, 122 kB). This document covers definitions of terms related to payment system instruments, payment systems and securities settlement systems.

Statistics of payments in the EU

Up to 2007, the European Central Bank (ECB) was issuing the so-called "Blue Book" (see below) – publication describing payment system instruments, payment systems and securities settlement systems in all member states of the European Union (text and statistical part).

Since 2007, the complete statistical data can be downloaded from the ECB’s website through the Statistical Data Warehouse at http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/.

The Blue Book

The Blue Book was a publication published by the European Central Bank which described payment system instruments, payment systems and securities settlement systems in all member states of the European Union.

The central banks of the Member States concerned were responsible for the preparation of country chapters. The Blue Book consisted of a text part and a statistical part.

The latest full version (i.e. text and statistical part) of the Blue Book was published by the European Central Bank in June 2001 (covering the then 15 EU member states) and in August 2002 (covering the then 12 accession countries).

The latest text part was published in August 2007. This edition consists of two volumes. Volume 1 contains euro area countries. Volume 2 contains non-euro area countries.

Since 2007, statistical part of the Blue Book has not been published in written form. The data can be downloaded from the ECB's website through the Statistical Data Warehouse (SDW) at http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/.

Blue Book - particular documents

Text part

• "Blue Book" - Payment and securities settlement systems in the European Union - non-euro area countries, text part, August 2007 (link to the ECB pages)
• "Blue Book" - Payment and securities settlement systems in the European Union - euro area countries, text part, August 2007 (link to the ECB pages)

Statistical part

• Statistical Data Warehouse (SDW) - statistical data.(link to the ECB pages)
• Statistics on payments and securities trading, clearing and settlement - data for 2006
• "Blue Book" - Payment and securities settlement systems in the European Union and in the acceding countries - only statistical part, data for the period 2001-2005, December 2006 (link to the ECB pages)
• "Blue Book' - Payment and securities settlement systems in accession countries - text and statistical part, data for the period 1996 - 2001, August 2002 (pdf, 4.3 MB)
• "Blue Book' - Payment and securities settlement systems in the European Union - text and statistical part, data for the period 1995 - 1999, June 2001 (pdf, 5.1 MB)
  
  Text part  of the documents  issued in 2001 and 2002 is already obsolete.