The rankings attempt to assess the health of fiscal regimes and improvements made since 2001, when eurozone economic growth started to slow. The criteria are, of course, arbitrary and far from exhaustive but hopefully proxies for at least some of the things finance ministers should be doing: – cutting deficits, reforming tax systems and so on. On tax, the percentage of revenues derived from consumption taxes offers a very rough guide to competitiveness – the higher the burden on consumption, the lower the burden on incomes and profits. Each finance minister has also been ranked out of three by FT correspondents according to their political effectiveness.