guy quaden : models of co - operation in an enlarged eu introductory speech by guy quaden, governor of the national bank of belgium, at the irr - nbb - colloquium in brussels on 28 january 2003. * * * ladies and gentlemen, i am very pleased and proud to welcome you all at the national bank of belgium. i would like to bring you back in time for a while, to the summer of 1993. most belgian people surely remember the decease of king baudouin on saturday, 31st of july. however, in my memories the same weekend is also connected to some other, also rather dramatic, events that took place in brussels. at the time, i was a member of the monetary committee of the european community and i remember very well that the european monetary system got into severe problems in july 1993. friday 30th of july has been recorded as " black friday " in the history of the banque de france because of the huge interventions needed to support the french franc on the exchange markets that day. the situation made it necessary to call an urgent meeting of the eu finance ministers and the central bank governors and their closest collaborators. we met on sunday afternoon the 1st of august here in brussels in centre borchette while thousands of belgians queued before the royal palace to pay their last respects to the king. we all were convinced that we had to find a solution to the crisis before the opening of the exchange markets on monday morning. the negotiations - under the newly started belgian presidency - were very tough. france wanted the german mark to leave the ems but that was of course unacceptable, not only for germany. only after midnight, a couple of hours before the opening of the tokyo market, we could reach an agreement. it was decided to open up the fluctuation margins of the exchange rate mechanism to 15 percent above and under the central parities. in less than one year, we had lived 6 realignments plus the opening up of the margins! today recalling these events may seem like telling heroic stories from ancient times. we can only imagine what kind of currency tensions the bursting of the ict bubble, the terrorist attacks of ix - xi [ " nine - eleven " ] and the current geopolitical and economic stance in general would have brought to the western european countries, if we hadn't got the euro. it will be obvious to you now why the national bank of belgium is in favour of european integration. we are rather convinced that

supervisory authorities during the crisis. however, we may want to examine today if there is a need to further intensify this multilateral cooperation, both in normal circumstances and in times of crisis. first, several ways to strengthen the links between authorities in normal times have already been explored and sometimes tried out in practice. future priorities for further developing financial supervision in the european union have been set out and several instruments to reinforce cooperation between authorities have been identified. at present, we need to further work on the implementation of these measures and to monitor their efficiency. secondly, with regard to potential improvements in the crisis management framework, let me first note that several observers had predicted that the shortcomings in our system would be striking in a crisis situation. similarly, the functioning of our crisis management framework has been tested in crisis simulation exercises on several occasions over the last years and many suggestions have been made to improve it. the crisis that we have been dealing with over the last few months, together with the generally satisfactory functioning of our crisis management framework up to now, obviously force us to take a fresh look at the various suggestions that were made to improve the framework before the crisis arose. however, they do not excuse us from keeping a critical eye on our framework. all suggestions relating to improvements in the supervisory and crisis management framework may at the end of the day call for consideration to be given to making some legal changes and re - distributing responsibilities. whatever changes might be needed, they should always ensure that we have a flexible enough crisis management framework to deal with any kind of crisis, especially as each one is different and has elements that can never be anticipated. and it is essential for authorities to keep the right balance between the allocation of responsibilities in the supervisory and the crisis management frameworks. these two key concerns should obviously remain in the back of our minds when we review the lamfalussy process today. concluding remarks to conclude, and before we start assessing the lamfalussy architecture, i would like to remind you what architecture is all about. in an early essay in the first century ad, the roman architect vitruvius defined the essence of his art as being the design of buildings meeting three different criteria. they first need to be durable and so should be strong, solid and based on sound foundations. secondly, buildings need to be functional and convenient for the people using them. thirdly, buildings need to be beautiful, and should raise the spirits of those who are living or working in them. so