the form of a new, overarching supervisory authority in europe. don ’ t get me wrong - i don ’ t fail to recognise the need for a rapid harmonisation of supervisory rules and practices in order to make the system leaner, to reduce the administrative time and effort on the part of banks, and to keep the playing field level in future as well. yet i feel it is necessary to go one step further at the european level. the existing coordination bodies have done good work. these forums should be strengthened instead of taking what is, in my opinion, the too - large and currently not viable step of creating new institutions. strengthening these forums would give an added boost to the process of harmonisation. in the interests of financial market stability at the european level, it is necessary to put together systemic developments in the individual countries to form a whole. with the banking supervision committee, or bsc, we already have a body that could cover that aspect. this committee can function as an “ observatory of systemic risk ” and as a coordination body for cross - border banking supervisory and crisis management issues. ladies and gentlemen, i am convinced that with such an evolutionary and flexible approach which does not create a precedent for any financial market trends and which will later open up different institutional opportunities, challenges to supervisors can be met successfully in future, too.

. a booming economy, at home and abroad with 7. 5 million people, switzerland is indeed a small country, surrounded by the economically powerful european union. we have no natural resources, and contrary to singapore, we do not even have a chance of gaining new territory by raising it out of the surrounding sea. nevertheless, we have a highly developed economy and a gdp per capita that clearly exceeds the european average. contrary to the situation among some of our neighbours, our population is still growing, thanks to immigration. our foreign population now represents more than 20 % of the total population and 25 % of the labour force. despite strong immigration, our unemployment rate – 3. 1 % – is relatively low. in recent years, our economy has been doing better than its neighbouring countries in terms of growth and employment. at probably close to 3 % this year, our economic expansion is above our potential. obviously, the fact that we are not a member of the european union is no obstacle to our development. this is good news. however, switzerland remains a slow - growing country – not only when compared to singapore and other " east asian tigers ". our weak growth performance in the long run is due in part to full employment, the relatively high level of personal income and the limited scope for domestic investment. like many other highly developed industrial nations, switzerland is increasingly a producer of services. the flagship of our service industry is the financial sector, which expanded markedly in the 1990s and now accounts for 15 % of our gdp – more than the machine tool industry and the chemical industry together. during the same period, however, the number of banks was reduced by half and the number switzerland ranks fifth in terms of european visitor arrivals to singapore, just behind france and the netherlands. of bank employees has remained stable despite expanding financial activities. these figures show that our financial industry has been eager to react swiftly to the challenges posed by globalisation. switzerland has a solid balance of payments position. thanks to a large excess of savings over domestic investment, our current account surplus is constant and substantial. contrary to popular belief, my country is not an importer of capital, but a net capital exporter. our current account surplus represents 15 % of our gdp, a level which can only be compared to that of some asian countries like singapore. in terms of labour market openness, another step will be achieved next year with the full liberalisation of labour markets between switzerland and the traditional members of the eu. from our perspective, this is