not a member of the committee and, as such, he was not supposed to intervene during the meetings, but his personal relations with jacques delors and with carlo azeglio ciampi, then governor of the banca d ’ italia and a member of the committee, as well as his role as “ rapporteur ” allowed him to bis central bankers ’ speeches greatly influence the deliberations. that was an excellent opportunity to combine his two aspirations : a stable currency but also one that would powerfully contribute to european union. in the 1989 – 91 negotiations that led to the maastricht treaty, tommaso fought hard to maintain the momentum towards monetary union which had been established by the delors committee. indeed, he feared that the decision to establish a temporary institution, the european monetary institute, instead of the european central bank, would be a critical mistake, also considering that in the meantime in a number of countries, again including italy, policies were not sufficiently stability - oriented. we know the story since then : the project of monetary unification came close to failure with the repeated exchange rate crises in the first half of the 1990s. but europe ’ s efforts in its historical endeavour eventually succeeded. in the 1993 – 97 preparatory work for the launch of the euro, tommaso had yet another chance to show his unique ability to build on the one hand, a strong conceptual, analytical and policy framework ( the “ vision ” ) and, on the other hand, to implement a concrete set of measures and actions to turn the vision into reality. in the area of financial stability, tommaso elaborated and worked towards the realisation of three fundamental ideas. first, he provided a far - sighted yet, in the end, realistic contribution to the design of the architecture for financial supervision in europe. he was convinced that in a single market, and even more so within a single currency area, the supervisory framework had to be as convergent as possible, entailing a transfer of supervisory responsibilities from national to eu level. indeed, he was convinced that the public good of financial stability also needed to be provided at eu level, and that would have necessitated the creation of an eu supervisory framework. at maastricht, the member states could not agree on this. tommaso considered this a mistake – and the eu had to learn its lesson from this omission the hard way, during the financial crisis. tommaso regarded the convergence of supervisory rules and of supervisory practices through

financial crisis is that, where a clear separation between central bank and supervisory functions exists, the trend is to shift the responsibility for prudential supervision to the central bank. in the area of international relations, tommaso was convinced that, as the central bank of an economy roughly the same size as that of the united states, the eurosystem had to gradually develop its international role and policy : it owed this to its “ domestic constituency ” as well as to the global community, in which monetary unification in europe could play an important role by enhancing global policy cooperation. in this area too, tommaso was a fervent advocate of the national central banks of the euro pooling their forces, acting as a system and playing a role consistent with the institutional mission and interests of the eurosystem. his belief in international cooperation was founded on the conviction that there are, on the global agenda, many economic issues – including trade, finance, global imbalances, energy and the emergence of new global and regional players. their scale and complexity call for policy efforts that go beyond national borders and make cooperation at global level desirable and feasible. in a series of lectures he gave here at the european university institute shortly before the end of his term at the european central bank, he argued that the long - term solution, what he had earlier called the “ royal way ”, would be to adapt institutions to today ’ s policy needs, to reform them with a view to enhancing their effectiveness and representation, extending in many cases some of their operational and decision - making practices. tommaso belongs to that group of personalities who played a decisive role in shaping international cooperation. he contributed to formal and informal group discussions at global level, but also worked on a bilateral basis with countries, institutions, and people from africa, asia, latin america and from the mediterranean countries. one of his initiatives was to set up the high - level eurosystem seminars, regularly bringing together the members of the governing council with governors from selected central banks, for example, those from eu candidate countries, or from countries around the mediterranean, or from countries in africa or the middle east that were considering a monetary union for their own region, or even from latin american countries. it was something unique to have – regularly sitting around the same table – the governor of the central bank of israel and the governor of the palestinian monetary authority sharing views, in an open and candid manner, on the challenges that they were facing, together with their