best insurance against having to endure swift and painful adjustment in the face of imminent danger is to conduct sound fiscal and structural policies. this means building up buffers and efficient structures in good times so that a member state never ends up in such a situation again. this is, first and foremost, the responsibility of the member states themselves. it also means that the excessive deficit and the excessive imbalances procedures must be enforced thoroughly. more generally, we saw that the lack of an adequate governance framework at the european level considerably narrowed the policy options available once the crisis hit. only when a new institutional set - up was built up, step - by - step, did more and more options become available again. this leads us to an important lesson : to collectively retain sovereignty, member states need to share sovereignty. we have come a long way since 2010 in this regard, in particular with the step - by - step establishment of a banking union, but we are not there yet. i am sure that your institution will continue to play an essential role in this process, as it repeatedly has in recent years. the troika in its current form will not be there forever. i am convinced that in the long term, europe ’ s crisis management framework should be brought under the single umbrella of community law. but there is no short term alternative and as long as it is sought, we will continue to contribute our candid advice, learning from experience. i thank you for your attention and i am now looking forward to your questions. bis central bankers ’ speeches

the impact of deeper product and financial market integration and convergence of macroeconomic policies. differences in trend growth are now the main reason for most differentials, something which also explains why the dispersion of growth rates shows a considerable degree of persistence. what conclusions can be drawn from these observations? firstly, that, since it turns out that there is more heterogeneity across countries in trend output developments than in cyclical movements, monetary policy is confronted with a relatively symmetric environment in those fields where it has an impact. secondly, for the competitiveness mechanism to work properly, wage and price rigidities have to be tackled by national structural reforms. moreover, decentralised fiscal policies based on automatic stabilisers are also an important instrument in reducing growth differentials. but sound public finances are a necessary condition for automatic stabilisers to work fully. member states should draw lessons from their maladjusted fiscal policy in the previous upswing and get their budgets into surplus during good times. v. lessons from eu integration and challenges for africa as previously mentioned, the road to eu economic and monetary integration has been paved by three long - term structural factors. first and foremost, there has been a strong underlying political will which has its roots in the reconciliation and cooperation process initiated in europe after the second world war. secondly, economic integration advanced considerably over the following decades, fostered not only by trade interdependence, but also by the web of social linkages created through business, tourism or educational exchanges. and, thirdly, there is a growing economic consensus moving away from active demand management policies towards a more medium - term orientation, based on structural, supply - side - oriented policies with a monetary policy strongly geared towards price stability. those three factors have reinforced each other in a long process of gradual building on prior achievements. although that process was repeatedly interrupted owing to a diversity of economic and political difficulties, it comes to the credit of europe's political leaders that they were able to appreciate those difficulties correctly and to respond to them with a visionary and forward - looking project, sometimes in the face of strong opposition. an important ingredient in the success of emu is also that the project was flexible enough to address specific concerns and overcome various sources of resistance while keeping a high degree of consistency as regards its aims and conditions of access. in launching its own economic and monetary integration process, africa is starting out from quite a different position, in all three above - mentioned fields. countries on the