decades, but this has also led to the accumulation of certain vulnerabilities. recent extraordinary shocks, the covid pandemic and the war in ukraine have significantly disrupted global value chains and commodity markets and have created an environment of heightened uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. these new developments have emerged in the last few years, but before that we had already seen trade tensions between the united states and china. and, unfortunately, in recent weeks we have added to the list the war in the middle east and the still unknown consequences of the red sea crisis. these shocks have clearly raised new questions about the future of globalisation and the growing importance of geopolitical factors in economic relationships. in this sense, although globalisation of the good trade was already slowing before the pandemic, concerns about the resilience of global value chains and the security of the supply of strategic products are now becoming more apparent. this is particularly relevant for countries as open as the european union, which is probably the most open region in the world. in 2019 the share of foreign trade in the eu's gdp reached 54 % after increasing significantly, a percentage that is double the figure for the united states ( 26 % ). let me give you another figure : the share of global 3 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches value chain participation in trade is around 20 pp higher in the european union than in the united states. the same conclusion can be reached if you look at financial figures, such as the stock of gross external assets and liabilities relative to gdp, which is again higher for the european union than for the united states. we are more open and, therefore, more dependent, so we have to be particularly concerned about the potential risks that could arise from changing patterns in globalisation if these changes do not take place in an orderly manner. in the global context, beyond the european union, these concerns are driving decisions made by firms and governments alike. governments are increasingly concerned that, in this new scenario, trade and financial openness could create excessive dependencies on third countries. accordingly, they are trying to respond to this new environment and have moved geopolitical considerations higher up in their agendas with policies seeking, precisely, to limit external vulnerabilities. in this new globalisation context, governments and firms could be moving towards a scenario where they favour diversification over dependence, security over efficiency, or regionalisation over globalisation. * * * * against this background, external statistics, which

be made of existing information. access to private sector and administrative data and data sharing mechanisms between statistical agencies, both at national and international, level are key. in this regard, tax records, social security data, credit card data or mobile phone data have proved to be very useful in complementing surveys and other traditional data sources during the covid pandemic. these tools bring to the discussion new partnerships for the production of statistics ( private - public or public - public ) and call for strengthened collaboration between national statistical offices and central banks. confidentiality barriers should be knocked down by revising related regulations and making use of the best technological solutions. promoting the extensive use of the legal entity identifier ( lei ) is also an important objective that would facilitate the identification of counterparties and thus data - sharing at the international level. efficiency and data - sharing leads me to the important measures that we must forge ahead with to make granular information available to researchers through data laboratories and thus multiply the usefulness of the enormous amount of information that we handle. in this regard, national central banks and other authorities need to coordinate to make microdata from complementary sources available to researchers. let me provide an example. i consider it of the utmost importance that the analysis of trade flows in goods and services – based on data that are largely in the hands of statistical institutes and tax authorities – be combined with that of the financial variables closely monitored by central banks and, particularly, with data on foreign direct investment. these are complementary areas whose analytical potential would be multiplied enormously if trade and finance data could be made available at the microdata level. another aspect of data - sharing relates to the idea of collecting the information only once and consistently. we are trying to move in this direction as regards reporting by 5 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches credit institutions with the integrated reporting framework ( the so - called iref ), which will harmonise, standardise and integrate existing escb requirements for collecting statistical information from banks across statistical domains and countries. likewise, one might ask whether a similar approach could be used for multinational enterprises. indeed, mnes need to report a large amount of information in different regions, in compliance with different reporting regulations. any effort to standardise such reporting would surely imply a lower burden on these enterprises and result in more consistent and better quality information for the authorities and, ultimately, sounder assessment and policy analysis. * * * all in all, high - quality and timely external statistics