beyond brexit – are the recent defeats of the nationalist parties and their euroscepticism in a number of european countries. whenever the temptation of reverting to nationalism arises, we should remember tommaso padoa - schioppa : he liked to remind us that the founding fathers of the european union – among whom robert schuman, konrad adenauer and alcide de gasperi – shared the same motto : “ never again a war among us. ” in the very uncertain world of 2017, and with the dangerous hesitations of the new american administration, this is sadly very relevant : peace remains the first european promise. this is the reason why our common responsibility is to persevere along the path of european integration. but we cannot continue as before. people expect concrete results. what we need is not necessarily more europe, but rather a “ better ” europe : less words, more action. europe must be more focused on a few projects, and more efficient. to put it briefly : “ let ’ s do little, but well, and until the end ”. there are naturally some non - economic priority areas such as defence, border security, climate change as well as youth education and training – for example an erasmus - pro programme for apprenticeship for the unqualified and unemployed youth. but i will focus today on the economic field. this is obviously my area of expertise as a central banker. more importantly, there is a strong relationship between economic prosperity and citizens ’ attachment to europe. the policy orientations that i will propose today build and elaborate further on some ideas that i presented here in brussels just over a year ago. i am very pleased that the 1 / 8 bis central bankers'speeches european commission ’ s future of the eurozone paper published yesterday goes in the same direction, although with some understandable caution... in my view, this is an additional sign that we now have a unique momentum in europe, that we should not let wane. i would like today to elaborate on what i like to see as three economic triangles. first, we resolved a first incompatibility triangle 18 years ago by achieving our monetary union. now, we are confronted with a second incompatibility triangle, due to the weaknesses of our economic union. therefore, i think that we now need to implement a compatibility triangle to boost europe ’ s growth and revive the european project. 1. the european monetary union has been a successful answer to the “ impossible trinity

market transparency experience shows that uncertainty and incomplete information are determining factors in mimetic behaviour. these shortfalls in market transparency make mimetic behaviour seem rational to agents, who prefer to follow bigger participants, who are thought to be better informed, rather than develop their own analysis. strengthening transparency therefore continues to be a priority. one of the objectives of transparency is to enable better differentiation of borrower creditworthiness. a key feature of mimetic behaviour is that all borrowers are " tarred with the same brush ". so when one emerging economy encounters difficulties, all neighbouring countries, or countries that share common characteristics, are treated in the same way – regardless of their actual economic and financial situation. the same applies to businesses operating in the same economic sector. transparency has substantially increased since the asian crisis, thanks to a solid global consensus. let us continue and reinforce these efforts. take into account the medium and long - term perspective of some market participants some investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies, have to invest funds in order to enable their customers to build up wealth over the medium and long term, notably in preparation for retirement. consequently, these types of investors are supposed to behave differently from traders and short - term investors, who are working on a very different time horizon. but at times it seems that they are all pushed to behave in much the same way, on the basis of a very short - term horizon. to preserve, and even restore, their specific investment approach, these investors might be more shielded from excessive short - term pressures. this objective raises considerable difficulties, because it touches on the way in which the performances of medium and long - term funds ( including pension funds ) and life insurance companies are assessed. in other words, this objective concerns the accounting standards and practices they use. it implies that some rules and standards would be adapted to the medium and long - term horizon used by these entities. i have no answer at this stage. i am only asking the question. diversify the risk management tools of financial institutions as i mentioned earlier, even the best techniques can have adverse effects when used by too many participants. to some degree, this is perhaps what has happened to value - at - risk based techniques, which have been massively adopted by the financial industry. because they use more or less similar parameters and suffer from the same weaknesses – for example, they took inadequate account of market liquidity at the time of the 1998 crisis –, such tools tend to give con