mario draghi : farewell remarks remarks by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, at the farewell event in his honour, frankfurt am main, 28 october 2019. * * * this year marks two decades of monetary union, which is by any measure a momentous anniversary. not so long ago, the euro area economy was scarred by a level of unemployment probably unseen since the great depression, and fundamental questions were being asked about whether the euro would survive. today 11 million more people are in work. public trust in the euro has risen to its highest level ever. across the euro area, policymakers are reaffirming that the euro is irreversible. but i see today more as an occasion to reflect than to celebrate. the euro is an eminently political project, a fundamental step towards the goal of greater political integration, which found its economic justification in the parlous state of european economies in the mid - 1980s. unemployment had risen from 2. 6 % in 1973 to 9. 2 % in 1985 and growth had slowed significantly in the 12 countries that would go on to form the euro area. what the visionary leaders of that era saw, however, was that europe had a powerful tool at its disposal to raise growth : to transform its common market into a single market. removing existing barriers to trade and investment could reverse the decline in economic potential and bring more people back into work. yet the single market was always about more than just this. it also aimed to protect people from some of the costs of the changes that would inevitably arise. unlike the wider process of globalisation, it allowed europe to impose its values on economic integration – to build a market that, to the extent possible, was free and just. common rules would create trust between countries, give the weak recourse against the strong and provide safeguards for workers. the single market, in this sense, was a bold attempt at “ managed globalisation ”. it combined competition with levels of consumer and social protection unseen in the rest of the world. but there was one type of unfair practice that the single market could not prohibit : competitive devaluations. that prospect would undermine the mutual trust that was critical for the single market to survive and for the project of greater political integration to progress. freely floating currencies were therefore not an option, and fixed exchange rates would not work as capital became more mobile within europe, as the erm crisis in 1992 – 3 proved. the answer was to

towards a fiscal capacity will most likely be a long one. history shows that budgets have rarely been created for the general purpose of stabilisation, but rather to deliver specific goals in the public interest. in the us, it was the need to overcome the great depression that led to the expansion of the federal budget in the 1930s. perhaps, for europe, it will require an urgent cause such as mitigating climate change to bring about such collective focus. whichever path is taken, it is plain to see that now is the time for more europe, not less. i mean this not in an axiomatic way, but in the truest traditions of federalism. where results can best be delivered by national policies, let it stay that way. but where we can only deliver on the legitimate concerns of the public by working together, we need europe to be stronger. for us europeans, in a globalised world, a true sovereignty that meets people ’ s needs for security and prosperity can be achieved only by working together. 6 as chancellor merkel has said, “ we europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands if we want to survive as a community ”. 7 working together allows us to protect our interests in the world economy, to resist the pressures of foreign powers, to influence global rules to reflect our standards, and to enforce our values on global corporations. none of these can be achieved to the same degree by countries acting alone. in a globalised world, sharing sovereignty is a way to regain sovereignty. but recognising that we need to exercise what president macron has termed “ european sovereignty ” 8 to be effective does not mean that we already have the political infrastructures to do so today. awareness of their necessity is growing quickly, however. we saw this emerging in the most recent european parliament election, which was perhaps the first such election fought mainly on european questions. even those who were seeking to slow down european integration did so by contesting the eu institutions rather than rejecting their legitimacy outright. this is only a start, but it suggests our union is moving in the right direction. i am confident that it will continue to do so, because it is ultimately the self - interest of individual countries that lays out our future path towards a european sovereign. the actions of many committed europeans, at both the national and eu levels, have helped us to reach this point. there are three groups whose contributions i would like to single out. the first is the staff of the ec