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It is my great pleasure to open today’s conference. I would like to use this opportunity to reflect on some important developments in financial integration that have taken place over the last two years, and assess them from the perspective of an EU financial system for the future – the title of today’s conference.
I will begin by touching on the pandemic’s implications for the financial sector in Europe. I will discuss how the progress achieved on financial integration since the start of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has helped to increase the resilience of the EU financial sector, before arguing that a further deepening of EMU can help tackle the current and future challenges that come our way. I will then conclude by reflecting on the economic fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the implications that could have for financial stability and financial integration.
Let me first discuss the implications of the pandemic crisis. When the pandemic began, we saw a notable decrease in euro area financial integration. But thanks to fast and decisive policy action at the monetary, fiscal and prudential levels, this deterioration not only stopped, it actually reversed relatively quickly. This is in contrast to what has typically occurred in previous crises.
As the pandemic unfolded, public health measures, mobility restrictions and production constraints limited household consumption levels. This meant that key private channels of risk-sharing across euro area countries were restricted. So public risk-sharing via governments became crucial for macroeconomic stabilisation.
Major fiscal initiatives at EU level were key to ensuring that risks were shared among Member States, compensating for the fact that private financial channels were hampered. Sizeable fiscal risk-sharing mechanisms were established with the Next Generation EU recovery package. The associated investments and reforms are expected to improve risk-sharing at the public sector level over the coming years. Joint support from fiscal and monetary policy has been indispensable in avoiding a much deeper economic downturn. For example, credit support measures, such as loan guarantees, proved critical in shoring up the financing of firms and households during the pandemic.
At the same time, we should not overlook the decisive role played by the EU financial system in weathering the crisis, notably by being able to meet financing needs during the pandemic. The fact that the system could withstand a shock the size of the pandemic is testament to the effective implementation of ambitious financial reforms in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
But it’s important to remember that it took a lot of hard work to achieve this resilience. EU financial integration has come a long way since the launch of EMU in 1992. Soon after the introduction of the euro, policymakers realised that the single currency alone was not enough to spur the further development and integration of the EU financial system. Support was needed from policies that were conducive to the free flow of financial services in the euro area, in addition to adequate legal, regulatory and supervisory frameworks, along with greater institutional integration. There were several milestones on the road towards European financial integration, including the European Commission’s Financial Services Action plan for the harmonisation of the EU financial services markets starting in 1999, the Lamfalussy architecture to improve regulatory processes introduced in 2001, the launch of the banking union in 2012 and the two subsequent action plans for the capital markets union (CMU) in 2015 and 2020.
Despite these achievements, there is still more work to be done. We need to push forwards and further deepen EMU. And we need to do so while keeping in mind the new challenges that we face, such as the transition to a sustainable economy....
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