christine lagarde : towards an orderly energy transition opening remarks by ms christine lagarde, president of the european central bank, at the joint iea - ecb - eib high - level international conference on " ensuring an orderly energy transition : europe's competitiveness and financial stability in a period of global energy transformation ", paris, 29 september 2023. * * * it is a pleasure to be here at today's conference organised together with the international energy agency ( ies ) and the european investment bank ( eib ), the first time our institutions have joined forces like this. the recent years have shown that volatile energy prices and persistent shifts in energy markets can have significant implications for inflation dynamics. despite our different mandates, we therefore have a shared interest in an orderly energy transition. in the last few years, two points about this transition have become increasingly clear. the first is that the scientific consensus on climate change is being borne out. everywhere we look, we see natural disasters becoming more frequent and more severe, with the floods in greece and libya being the latest examples. over the past fifty years, the number of weather - related disasters has increased by a factor of five. 1 the second point is that there will be high social costs if we get the green transition wrong. last year's energy crisis was unrelated to the green transition, but it highlighted how vulnerable we are to energy price volatility. and that drew attention to the potential burden decarbonisation might put both on industry and people, increasing support for those who favour delaying climate action. so how can we meet the urgency of the challenge – but also be less disruptive? to my mind, there are three key elements of a smooth transition : avoiding procrastination, understanding the challenge, and sharing the burden fairly. avoiding procrastination first, while it is tempting to think that we can smooth out the cost of the transition by pushing back climate targets, the evidence suggests that this will not be the case. procrastinating is likely to increase the bill we will end up having to pay. in our recently published economy - wide climate stress test, we showed that under a late - push transition, the most vulnerable banks would face loan portfolio losses twice as high as the median. 2 1 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches and pushing back targets will not buy us more time for the investment required. the latest ecb survey on the access to finance of enterprises for the first

##bs ) of all eu member states. the eurosystem is composed of the ecb and the 11 ncbs of those member states which have adopted the euro. the six members of the ecb ’ s executive board and the governors of these 11 ncbs together form the governing council. this is the eurosystem ’ s highest decision - making body, which, among other things, has adopted the eurosystem ’ s regulatory framework. in my speech today, i will elaborate upon how the ecb, but also the community legislator, national legislators and market participants have struggled with the same question which hugo de groot already addressed in his days in another context : in view of the introduction of the euro, where is, on the one hand, unification of law desirable and where may, on the other hand, national differences continue to exist? or, to remain closer to the title of my speech : where, and to what extent, has the euro acted as a catalyst for legal convergence, and where is further convergence appropriate? as a preliminary remark, the introduction of the euro and the globalisation of the world ’ s financial markets are clear incentives for a development towards “ one market, one currency, one law ”. there are, however, at least two important impediments for such law to emerge in the near future. first, there are the community law principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. subsidiarity requires that the community legislator only adopts legislation if this is necessary to achieve the community ’ s objectives. proportionality requires that the type of legal act to be adopted be proportionate, ie not too heavy, in relation to the objectives to be achieved. second, the eu consists of as many different legal systems as there are member states, although there are, of course, similar types of legal systems of common orientation ( roman law, anglo - saxon law or the scandinavian systems ). recognition of the peculiarities of such legal systems in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality leads automatically to legal diversity. in addition, for the eurosystem it is also important to mention that system - related tasks are executed in a decentralised fashion through the ncbs in their respective jurisdictions. for example, with regard to the eurosystem ’ s single monetary policy, the ecb ’ s decision - making bodies decide on such policy, but the ncbs execute monetary policy operations in their respective jurisdictions. all in all, a system