Much of the complexity in making progress in cross-border payments arises from the significant number of stakeholders in the public and private sector. The building blocks under this Focus Area are intended to drive meaningful, coordinated change at a global level over a sustained period. This will address frictions where complex regulatory, political and operational issues are prevalent. It will also provide the foundations to deliver interdependent building blocks in other focus areas. To date, much focus on removing frictions in cross-border payments has centred on technology and operations. But divergent regulation, legislation, supervision and oversight frameworks across jurisdictions, or overlaps and underlaps in frameworks, can reduce any benefits of such initiatives. The building blocks in Focus Area B are intended to foster greater coordination by advancing consistent international rules and standards. And this covers not just regulation of firms, or infrastructure providers but broader compliance and Anti-money laundering type issues too. That does not mean everything will end up being identical, but rather it seeks to promote greater consistency in rules and standards. The building blocks in Focus Area C are targeted at improving the existing payment infrastructures and arrangements to support the requirements of the market. This is at the heart of what we, as central banks, are doing. Addressing technical and operational restrictions rooted in the design of both international and domestic systems can tackle the key frictions underlying the challenges in cross-border payments, including different operating hours, access criteria and long transaction chains.

Foreseeably, demographic changes will affect consumption and saving patterns and tend to reduce productivity growth. This is why I must stress that addressing the population challenge calls for the adoption of a multidisciplinary strategy. Among other aspects, this strategy must encourage the participation of older workers, tailor migratory policy to labour market needs and boost the birth rate. In this scenario, education and vocational training policies are crucial. 8/18  Fourthly, the unemployment rate remains very high (14.7% in 2019 Q1), despite the fact that since the onset of the recovery almost 2.5 million jobs have been created. Moreover, around 45% of the unemployed have been looking for a job for a year or more. Improving the employability of the most vulnerable groups – namely youths and elderly workers, in particular the least skilled – is essential to reduce this scourge and thus help correct the strong rise in wage inequality that stemmed from the crisis. In this respect, it would be desirable to improve the human capital of the least skilled unemployed and to align job training measures to employers’ demands. These measures should be structured to fit others aimed at reducing the high temporary employment ratio, in light of its negative influence on human capital accumulation – to which I shall refer later – and, once again, on inequality. Indeed, despite trending more favourably over the past year, the temporary employment ratio stood in 2019 Q1 at almost 26%, far above that in other European countries.