crisis again increased the strains on the government debt markets and a fresh lack of confidence in the spanish banking sector and misgivings as to the quality of its assets resurfaced. those events highlighted the need for more rapid and far - reaching action to confront the difficulties facing a part of the spanish banking system. immediately, the banco de espana stepped up its transparency requirements for the asset portfolios on which doubts centred. thus early this year all savings banks were obliged to make public their exposure to the real estate development sector, their doubtful assets, their standard exposures under surveillance and their provisioning levels, and to specify the type of collateral securing those exposures. also, they were asked to publish information on their foreclosed assets and on their exposure to households through residential mortgages so that, although this is not an area of concern, the market could distinguish between risks which at times – unjustifiably – it treated similarly. further to the recently ratified royal decree - law, the spanish parliament has taken an additional step to strengthen bank solvency. happily, it was understood that, while important, what had been achieved thus far was not sufficient and that it was necessary to take further measures to hasten the restructuring process. the markets ’ reaction has demonstrated that the royal decree - law has been most effective in restoring confidence in the spanish banking system and has ushered in a new stage in the process of savings bank restructuring, adding to the progress of recent years in cleaning up balance sheets and reducing the sector ’ s capacity and fragmentation. the royal decree - law has some very specific aims. the first is to strengthen the solvency of all spanish banks, setting a level of core capital of at least 8 %. also, given that investors ’ misgivings centred on a small group of unlisted banks with a greater dependence on the wholesale market, it was decided to require those banks to hold core capital of 10 %. additionally, the royal decree - law stipulates that credit institutions needing government funds will have to pursue their financial activity through a commercial bank. this measure speeds up the strategy followed so far. savings banks that have to increase their level of core capital may raise that capital on the market through the commercial banks which, in most cases, they have created and started up since the end of last year. investors now have highly granular information on the portfolios of these banks, which moreover will be audited and published shortly. sometimes it is alleged that the injection of

all the other citizens of the euro area. the internal and external dimensions of europe today, none of us are just frankfurters or germans, or in my case, parisienne and francaise. all of us in europe form part of a bigger community : the european union. and we, too, have to decide how we want to organise ourselves internally and how we want to relate externally. on both fronts, some difficult questions are now being asked. at home, we hear voices questioning the value of european integration and the need for us to go on working together as a union to be stable and prosperous. globally, we face a world where the rules - based order is weakening, old and new powers are rising, and climate change is becoming the pre - eminent challenge of our age. in this uncertain environment, it would be easy for us to cling to the status quo, to hope these challenges will simply pass with time. but i fear this won ’ t be the case. so, i would like instead for us to ask – proactively and positively – what kind of europe we want to be in this new world. and to my mind, the answer has two parts. first, recognising how much european integration already offers us internally ; and second, acknowledging how much more we can achieve externally if we cooperate in the right way. 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches the value of our internal integration is not just measured in euro. europe is a symbol of who we are and who we aspire to be. the eu and the euro embody our common commitment to peace, to openness, to democracy, to justice. and they shape how we see ourselves : more than two - thirds of citizens now cite their european identity alongside their national identity. at the same time, integrating through our single market does bring us real economic benefits. according to one estimate, the eu ’ s gdp per capita would be as much as one - fifth lower today if no integration had taken place since the war. 2 and it is our common institutions in the eu that secure those gains – as events on the global stage currently demonstrate. global trade tensions are arising, essentially, because of perceptions of unfairness – be it over state support for industries, undercutting of labour standards or currency manipulation. but none of those things are possible within europe – by design. that ’ s because we have built a common court to which individuals and governments can appeal if they are treated unfairly.