. in the following weeks, coming to such an agreement was very difficult and necessitated tremendous efforts from all those involved. but i am grateful that in the end, an agreement was reached. if it is completely implemented, the new programme will put greece in a position to grow again and to reap the full benefits of participating in our common currency. the ecb contributed, in line with the provisions laid out in the legal framework, to the negotiation of the programme. in addition, the ecb closely monitored the provision of emergency liquidity assistance by the bank of greece according to our rules, taking into account the prospect of a successful completion of the negotiations at any point in time. completing emu : following up on the five presidents ’ report the negotiations over the summer revealed again the fact that our institutional framework is still not commensurate with the requirements of sharing one currency. in the five presidents ’ report that we published shortly after the last hearing, the five authors shared one common conviction, namely that to make monetary union stable and prosperous, a more complete union is necessary. but we did not only outline this common conviction ; we also presented a concrete roadmap showing how to attain this objective. this roadmap should now guide our discussions in the months to come. from our perspective, two elements are of particular importance. first, despite the best efforts of all actors involved, the crisis has shown that monetary union requires a political centre ; a centre that can take the relevant fiscal, economic and financial decisions for the euro area as a whole in a swift and transparent manner with full democratic legitimacy and a clear set of responsibilities given to it by the legislators. it is in this spirit that i have called repeatedly for a move from rules - based coordination to sharing of sovereignty within common institutions. the report proposes a euro area treasury as one example. such ideas now need to be spelled out. but we should also go further with regard to our policies. the report makes clear that emu will also need to strengthen its tools to manage and prevent the build - up of fiscal, financial and other macroeconomic risks. in the last few years, notably with the reforms strengthening the economic governance framework and setting up the esm, ssm and srm, we have bis central bankers ’ speeches made important first steps in improving our crisis prevention and crisis management toolkit. but we are not there yet. most imminently, we should move towards completing banking union through a common backstop for the single resolution

in terms of methodology and data sources. in line with the division of responsibilities at the european level, this work is being led by the ecb in the field of financial variables and by eurostat for the physical market variables. the two institutions are cooperating closely on the topic and we are confident that they will make good progress. real estate data is not merely a technical issue. the availability of these data could have profound consequences for macroprudential and monetary policymaking and so for all euro area citizens. it is therefore an opportune time for statisticians and other stakeholders to meet to discuss these issues and i trust this conference will help move the debate forward. 1 see for example mian, a. and sufi, a. ( 2014 ), house of debt, the university of chicago press. 2 household wealth is mainly held in the form of real assets, which represent 82. 2 % of total assets owned by households ; the remaining assets ( 17. 8 % ) are financial. the household main residence, with a portfolio share of 49. 5 % of total assets, is the largest component of real assets. see ecb ( 2016 ), “ the household finance and 3 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches consumption survey : methodological report for the second wave ”, statistics paper series no 18, ecb, frankfurt am main, december. 3 for a discussion of the relationship between wealth effects and consumption in the euro area see guerrieri, c. and mendicino, c. ( 2018 ), “ wealth effects in the euro area ”, working paper series, no 2157, ecb, frankfurt am main, june. 4 see battistini, n. and vourdas, j., european central bank ( 2018 ), “ the housing market as a predictor of prolonged contractions in economic activity ”, box 1 of the article “ the state of the housing market in the euro area ”, economic bulletin, issue 7. 5 see crowe, c., dell ’ ariccia, g., igan, d. and rabanal, p. ( 2011 ) “ how to deal with real estate booms : lessons from country experiences ”, imf working paper 11 / 91. 6 see dierick, f., point, e., cornacchia, w. and pirovano, m. ( 2017 ), “ closing real estate data gaps for financial stability monitoring and macroprudential policy