Member countries would be a “Schicksalsgemeinschaft” and would need strong common democratic underpinnings. But a deliberate choice was made in the 1990s not to give the euro such features. The euro was launched as a “currency without a state” to preserve the sovereignty and diversity of member countries. This informed the so-called “Maastricht setup”, which laid the euro’s institutional foundations. But as recent events have shown, this institutional framework left the euro area insufficiently equipped to ensure sound economic policies and effectively manage crises. For this reason, the way ahead cannot be a return to the status quo ante. The challenges of having a single monetary policy but loosely coordinated fiscal, economic and financial policies have been clearly revealed by the crisis. As Jean Monnet said, coordination “is a method which promotes discussion, but it does not lead to a decision.” And strong decisions have to be made to manage the world’s second most important currency. A new architecture for the euro area is desirable to create sustained prosperity for all euro area countries, and especially for Germany. The root of Germany’s success is its deep integration into the European and world economies. To continue to prosper, Germany needs to remain an anchor of a strong currency, at the centre of a zone of monetary stability and in a dynamic and competitive euro area economy. Only a stronger economic and monetary union can provide this. Yet this new architecture does not require a political union first.

The EBA is also working on guidelines on the transition plans to be drawn up by credit institutions. 17  lhttps://www.bde.es/f/webbde/INF/MenuVertical/Supervision/Normativa_y_criterios/Recomendaciones_BdE/Banco_ de_Espana_supervisory_expectations_relating_to_the_risks_posed_by_climate_change_and_environmental_degradati on.pdf 18  https://www.bankingsupervision.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2020/html/ssm.pr201127~5642b6e68d.en.html  19  https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2022/2453/oj  20  https://www.eba.europa.eu/eba-publishes-its-roadmap-sustainable-finance  In recent years, supervisory efforts in this field have also stepped up. For example, with the ECB thematic review,21 carried out in 2022, on compliance with supervisory expectations and the climate risk stress test22 whose results were published in the summer. These exercises showed that although banks have made progress in including these risks in their day-to-day management, there is still much to be done. I will now briefly mention the key aspects of these two exercises. Thematic review  The thematic review23 shows, among other aspects, that more than 80% of institutions recognise that climate risks have a material impact on their risk profile and that, in consequence, they have begun to include climate-related risks in their risk management framework. For example, they have mapped risk exposures and allocated responsibilities within their organisation, set risk indicators (KPIs) and begun to develop qualitative mitigation strategies. However, these measures are still not considered sufficiently sophisticated and, in addition, there is still a considerable shortage of granular data. Indeed, less than 10% of institutions use sufficient forward-looking data to manage this risk. Both the ECB and the national supervisors hope that by the end of 2024 institutions’ practices in this area will be fully aligned with supervisory expectations.