elections. sure, marine le pen, the front woman of the far right in france, did not become the french president, and geert wilders, her counterpart in the netherlands, did not become part of the dutch government. so yes, there is reason to be a little less pessimistic. however, two weeks ago, the german general election showed us that politics has not yet laid the groundwork for optimism, as a populist party came in third. i will come to that in a moment. in my eyes, though, the positive outcome is one of government stability : chancellor merkel ’ s conservative union gained the majority again. but she faces the difficult task of forming a coalition, as only two options are possible. the first, which is to continue her current grand coalition with the social democratic spd, has little chance of success as the spd wants to go into opposition. second, she could form what has been dubbed the jamaica coalition with the liberal free democratic party and the green party. while all parties are willing to enter into negotiations, it will be challenging – finding common ground, will take creative political agendasetting and political diplomacy. but i am confident that an agreement can be reached. thus, i am confident that the stability of the german political landscape will remain intact. and with that the strong growth momentum of the german economy will also remain intact, which, in turn, will be a strong basis for continued growth of the euro area economy. yet this election reveals a deeper, inconvenient truth – that we are far from having found sustainable solutions to the root causes of populist success. this is mirrored in the first far - right party entering the bundestag since 1949 : alternative for germany, or afd for short. it is now the third - biggest party in the bundestag, with almost 13 % of voters supporting it. 2 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches its supporters can be divided into three buckets : first, an established fringe group of far - right voters ; second, a group frustrated with how the government handled the refugee crisis and their integration ; and third, a group of economically disappointed people. about half of the party ’ s voters are economically disappointed. this is the economic side of why protectionism and populism still enjoy strong support. the afd, like many other populist parties, pins the blame for economic malaise on globalisation and european integration – and demand that they be reversed.

##dc. 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches e - hkd pilot programme today's event marks the commencement of the e - hkd pilot programme, which is a key component under rail 2. it is a tremendous opportunity for the hkma to work with the industry to consider different use cases and design choices, and co - create new payment functionalities and infrastructures that could add value to society. we look forward to this public - private partnership in shaping the future of money in hong kong. we will follow an iterative process for the pilot programme. each iteration will last for about a year and it will help enrich our perspective and refine our approach to a possible implementation of e - hkd. given the already vibrant retail payment landscape in hong kong, we understand clearly that the decision to implement e - hkd would very much depend on whether it can make payment more efficient and convenient than the existing payment methods and whether it can unlock new business opportunities. this is why the experiences from the pilot programme would be crucial in informing our policy decision. selected pilot programme participants i am very excited to see that the pilot programme has attracted immense industry interest. 16 companies have been selected to participate in the first batch of the pilot programme for 2023. these participants, some in groups, will work on 14 pilots which will span across six major categories, covering programmable payments, " dual offline " payments, and other new developments with the use of blockchain technology, such as settling web3 transactions and tokenised assets. these innovative use cases proposed by the industry truly open our eyes to new possibilities of what central bank money can do, and how e - hkd can potentially benefit the general public and businesses in hong kong. we will invite selected participants to come on stage shortly to give a brief overview of their proposed use cases. we also aim to share the key learnings of the pilot programme at the hong kong fintech week in november this year. i trust that the outcomes and insights gained from each of the above pilots should help enrich our perspective and refine our focus and priority of the pilot programme in subsequent years. cbdc expert group besides the pilot programme, the hkma is also fostering closer government - industryacademia collaboration on cbdc research. we plan to form a cbdc expert group to bring together leading professors from local universities, who will come from different fields, such as computer science, business and law. i am glad to tell you