An increasing number of countries have put in place or are developing solutions like these. Even in large economies with large payment volumes, round-the-clock settlement of all kinds of payments directly at the central banks is being facilitated. In 2018, the Eurosystem launched TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS). In autumn, the Federal Reserve announced that a similar system called FedNow! would be established for settlement of real-time payments in US dollars. Iceland already has a similar system The Riksbank is planning a transition to settlement of real-time payments directly at the central bank by linking to the European TIPS system. Settling real-time payments individually and directly at the central bank automatically eliminates the credit risk between system participants. The system is simplified because banks no longer need to take a detour via a clearing house. With fewer steps, the operational risk in the payment system may also be reduced. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  The EU Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) was implemented in Norwegian law with effect from April 2019. One of the purposes of PSD2 is to facilitate greater competition and innovation. Similar regulations are being implemented elsewhere in the world and may help enable new entrants to gain a foothold in the payments market, whether they are global tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook or smaller, more local operators. New services and service providers will require adjustments to underlying infrastructure and rules. Equal and transparent competitive terms are crucial.

Prestigious and well respected economists have been pointing to the fact that the Euro is not an optimum currency area. They also underlined that, absent sufficient labor mobility, there was a need for some form of fiscal federalism that current arrangements failed to fulfill by a large measure. Those arguments have been made and discussed for some time and deserve careful consideration. Obviously, recent turbulences and disruptions in the articulation of national fiscal policies have given them a new relevance. I will come back to this debate in a moment. At this stage, I will simply remind you of some responses that have been consistently formulated over the last decade. The benefits of the euro cannot be assessed exclusively through the lenses of the optimum currency theory. The Euro has brought to more than 400 million European citizens unprecedented stability. Price stability, obviously, with inflation averaging 1.97% over the last decade. And also, yes, financial stability. It is always useful to think of counterfactual when assessing a situation. Looking beyond current fiscal turbulences, let us think, for instance, how Europe would have absorbed the crisis with fifteen different currencies, fluctuating internal exchange rates, and, as a consequence, much higher volatility, uncertainty, risk premia and interest rates. This experiment speaks for itself. In addition, numerous studies have shown that economic cycles are becoming more and more synchronized across the euro countries. After a spike in 2009, the standard deviation between national growth rates inside the Euro area has gone down to its lowest historical level ever.