Bond markets and long-term interest rates in non-euro area member states of the European Union and in accession states

The ECB has an obligation to provide statistical information of the highest quality to the public and this third edition of the publication u0093Bond markets and long-term interest rates in non-euro area Member States of the European Union and in accession countriesu0094 serves to contribute to the performance of this task. This publication aims to inform policy-makers and the general public about recent developments in and the current structure of the national bond markets. As a consequence of the enlargement of the European Union on 1 May 2004 when ten new member states joined, the coverage of this third edition has been extended to include all thirteen non-euro area EU member states and two accession countries, Bulgaria and Romania. Therefore, statistics for Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been included for the first time. The publication now includes 15 national chapters, each of which is divided into five sections. Section 1 covers the size of the debt securities market by original maturity, sector of the issuer and currency of denomination. Section 2 provides an overview of activity in the primary and secondary markets, in terms of the methods for primary placements and the values and numbers of market transactions. This section also provides information on the liquidity of the secondary market. Section 3 focuses on certain features of individual long-term debt securities issued by the general government. Section 4 covers interest rates in order to obtain information on potential proxies. Finally, Section 5 briefly addresses issues related to securities market regulation. Data included in this publication have been reported until the end of September 2004.