and the ease of opening and running businesses. for example, in some member states contractual disputes between firms take on average little more than a year to resolve, while in other countries they take more than three years. start - ups in the latter countries have to deal with more red tape than their counterparts elsewhere. another telling example relates to the regulated professions whose number varies considerably across euro area member states [ from 45 in estonia, 170 in italy, 219 in france to 304 in slovakia, according to european commission figures ]. such barriers to entry limit competition and employment, creating undue rents for a select few to the detriment of customers. these are just a few examples. in many cases, these obstacles sap entrepreneurial spirits, especially of young, innovative firms that create most of the new jobs and that are highly sensitive to changes in investment opportunities. these examples show how converging towards best practice in the euro area would mean radical improvements in the business environment. spain provides an encouraging example in this regard. among the large euro area countries, investment in spain is projected to rebound strongly over the coming two years, notably due to the combination of business - friendly reforms and lower personal and corporate taxes. more recently, other countries have also committed to improve the business environment. a forceful and swift implementation of the necessary reforms is now key in order to reap the benefits as quickly as possible. bis central bankers ’ speeches strengthening the financing side a second area of key relevance for investment and also of direct interest to the eurofi community here tonight is the need to diversify sources of financing and to overcome financial fragmentation. until now, banks have been the main source of lending to companies. the crisis has shown the drawbacks of over - reliance on a bank - centred lending model. so we also need to develop reliable sources of non - bank lending, such as equity and bond markets, securitisation, lending from insurance companies and asset managers, venture capital and crowdfunding. this is why the ecb fully supports the intention of the incoming president of the european commission to create a capital markets union. such a step would be a natural development of the single market and would benefit all eu member states. we believe that one area that deserves particular attention is the development of a wellfunctioning market for simple, transparent and real asset - backed securities ( abs ). this would allow banks to still originate loans – notably to small and medium - sized enterprises ( smes ) – while preserving their balance

higher in small, open, developing economies. on the one hand, they may enjoy more potential benefits in the form of cheaper and faster payments, in particular for cross - border payments and remittances, and more financial inclusion. on the other, they may incur higher costs owing to the possible risks relating to monetary policy transmission and monetary sovereignty, in particular in economies which are partly dollarised. “ dollarisation ” can easily morph into “ stablecoinisation ” ( with apologies for the neologism! ). we ’ re flagging this in the report and it deserves closer consideration, which in my view the imf should lead. this is just the start of what looks like a long process of tackling the challenges of stablecoins. what would be the next immediate steps? the plan is to pass the baton to the financial stability board ( fsb ). the fsb has launched a 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches new working group on the regulatory implications of stablecoins, which i co - chair with chia der jiun from the monetary authority of singapore. this group will focus on regulatory frameworks and approaches, starting with a stocktake of how different jurisdictions intend to deal with stablecoins. this will feed into a report that will be submitted for public consultation in april 2020. can you give us a flavour of the scope of the challenges stablecoin projects involve? the list of issues raised by all stablecoin projects is already quite long, as you know from our july report. they relate to legal certainty – to put it simply, on what or whom is the stablecoin a claim – and also to the governance and the architecture of each project. other aspects have to do with compliance with money laundering and anti - terrorism financing rules and the question of whether a stablecoin payment system is safe and efficient enough. we can use existing international standards as a reference in this regard. then there are issues related to operational resilience and cybersecurity, market integrity and investor protection, and data protection, particularly segregation between payment data and data being produced in a social network. and you have issues with tax compliance. whenever these projects are based on existing global networks, there ’ s a chance that they may reach a critical size very quickly, which raises additional potential issues relating to financial stability, monetary policy and the functioning of the international monetary system. according to kenneth rogoff, some prominent central banker told him the goal