European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet said the ECB's emphasis on the monitoring of monetary growth has played a vital role in enabling it to achieve the same credibility and low level of market interest rates as the Bundesbank and its other successful predecessors. He said the ECB's two pillar monetary strategy, which relies on an economic analysis and a monitoring of monetary growth, has been "absolutely fundamental" in this success. The ECB has cited strong monetary and credit growth as one of the factors behind its recent interest rate increases. In a speech to honour ECB chief economist Otmar Issing, whose eight-year term ends in May, Trichet said the idea that Issing had been dogmatic in his insistence on the importance of monetary growth is unfounded. Issing had not simply applied the Bundesbank's approach to monetary policy to the ECB, but instead was always open-minded and took the best elements of the strategy of the various national central banks along with the results of academic research, and applied these in developing the ECB's monetary policy strategy, he said. "It is clear that our concept is not the Bundesbank concept. The two pillars were not the Bundesbank concept," he said. And Trichet said he sees signs that the ECB's two pillar approach is now winning support beyond the euro zone. "Our own policy concept is more and more convincing," he said. Trichet said the Maastricht treaty laid down three conditions which helped ensure the success of the euro -- the goal of price stability, the independence of the ECB and the 3 pct of GDP limit for government deficits. But he said Issing then played a major role in delivering three other components of the equation -- the monitoring of monetary aggregates, the ECB's quantitative definition of the price stability goal and the move to greater transparency in explaining rate decisions.