in the adverse macroeconomic environment. on the other hand, they support banks ’ lending capacity. consequently, it is logical to expect that we would continue to apply the measures of the anticrisis package, approved in march this year. furthermore, we analyse, on an ongoing basis, the situation, and as a macroprudential supervisory authority we consider the likely scenario of a worsening economic crisis and the related significant deterioration in loan portfolios. under this scenario, banks may need to temporarily operate under the combined capital buffers requirement, being ready to draw up and implement plans for rebuilding them. the prospect of continuing negative developments in the economy is a reason for us to expect materialization of credit risk and deteriorated quality of assets on banks ’ balance sheets. it seems very likely that the trend of decreasing amount and share of non - performing exposures, seen over the last few years, may reverse. the expiry of the moratorium on deferral of loan repayments could also give rise to an increase in non - performing exposures. this moratorium was possible on the basis of the eu - wide regulatory framework established by the european banking authority ( eba ) in its guidelines onlegislative and non - legislative moratoria on loan repayments applied in the light of the covid - 19 crisis. the application of this framework has provided banks with flexibility and relieved tens of thousands of their customers, natural and legal persons, experiencing difficulties in the crisis. in september this year a decision was taken at the eba to phase out the moratoria on bank loan repayments ; however the re - emergence of the pandemic and the new restrictive measures gave rise to an up - to - date analysis and extension of the moratoria upon introducing restrictive conditions. the bulgarian national bank, jointly with the other national supervisory authorities, actively participated in the eba discussions on this topic. we are ready to quickly implement the necessary decisions in bulgaria, subject to the conditions approved by eba – extension until 31 march 2021 of the deadline for submission of applications for deferral of liabilities and their approval by banks, with a maximum allowable 9 - month deferral, including the term of an already approved deferral on the relevant exposure. outside the scope of the moratorium, banks have the opportunity to individually renegotiate loans of their customers – an opportunity they have already been using. in these cases, the existing general prudential framework requires

lars heikensten : stability and growth pact needs reinforcement speech by mr lars heikensten, governor of the sveriges riksbank, at a conference organised by the european commission, brussels, 15 december 2004. * * * thank you, mr chairman. i very much appreciate this opportunity to comment on the work of the commission. perhaps the invitation is particularly pleasing for me as, unlike the other members on the panel, i do not come from a country that has introduced the euro. i should also immediately say that i very much enjoyed reading the background report and the communication on the stability and growth pact produced by the commission. let me begin by characterizing the experiences from the monetary union so far. there is no doubt that the regulations on fiscal policy laid down in maastricht had clearly positive effects up until the euro was launched. they are still having the same impact on those countries that remain outside the single currency and have the ambition of joining in the future. far - reaching measures were taken, and are also being taken today, to enable entry into the monetary union. noting the progress, some people have even claimed that earlier less well - functioning national economic - political cultures have been replaced by a more stability - oriented common european culture. but since the start of monetary union, this momentum has been lost. several countries have returned to their old behaviour even though there are good examples of the contrary. and this is not primarily the result of an unusually long slowdown, as many have claimed. the preceding boom was also unusually long. furthermore, we knew that there were large risks associated with the fiscal policies conducted in the initial years of the monetary union. the discussions on fiscal policy were occasionally rather acrimonious in the efc, for example. several of us gave clear warnings regarding the fiscal policies pursued by, for instance, france and germany at the time. the stability and growth pact obviously did not serve as the deterrent it was supposed to be, at least not sufficiently. nor did emu - so far anyway - contribute as much as we had hoped to making the european economy more efficient. perhaps there are a few exceptions here related to the financial sector and the financial markets. it is my intention in this introductory remark to focus on some suggestions for the future. in doing this, i will talk about macroeconomic issues, rather than dealing with the severe structural challenges europe is confronted with. however, before doing this let me make a general comment. in the