from cyber threats. i therefore invite you today to become part of the euro cyber resilience board ( ecrb ) for pan - european financial infrastructures – a regular forum where we can work together in a trusted environment. the ecrb ’ s objective is to enhance the cyber resilience of financial market infrastructures and their critical service providers, as well as that of the wider eu financial sector, in line with international standards. this will be achieved by fostering trust and collaboration and facilitating joint initiatives – whether among market players or between market players and authorities. the ecrb will thus contribute to the overall stability of the eu financial system. the ecrb will have no formal powers to impose binding measures and will not make supervisory judgements. its legitimacy will stem from the voluntary commitment of its members to abide by its common positions, statements and strategic views. the ecrb will be chaired by the ecb, which will be closely involved together with national 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches central banks and observers from the relevant european public authorities. this will ensure that the ecrb acts in the interest of europe as a whole. its common positions, statements and strategic views will be adopted by consensus. to kick off the work of the ecrb, we would like to reflect with you on possible work items which we could address collectively. as part of this, we will also report on two of our most recent activities. first, a cyber resilience survey, developed under the eurosystem oversight cyber resilience strategy, was conducted across more than 75 payment systems, central securities depositories and central counterparties throughout europe. as you will see, the survey highlighted a number of very pertinent issues for discussion, such as cyber governance, training and awareness, and cyber incident response. second, the eurosystem is currently finalising the main elements of the european threat intelligence - based ethical red - teaming ( tiber - eu ) framework. this is an interesting concept which we hope will raise the level of cyber resilience in europe and enable cross - border, crossauthority testing, which has not been done before. we look forward to hearing your feedback on these two initiatives. we will also update you on the forthcoming market - wide exercise, which will explore the challenges of a specific cyber scenario and see how we can work closer together in times of crisis. i am confident that we will have a fruitful discussion. i will now hand over to my colleague sabine

s no point artificially setting the interests of different countries against each other, because we are all in the same boat … your policies have also weakened the banks, who have seen their margins shrink to the point that some of them are no longer concerned about charging for deposits. on the one hand, interest rates are not low because of the ecb. us lowering our “ key rates ” ( for example, the rate at which bank deposits held with the ecb are remunerated ) to very low or even negative levels means that there is a savings glut in the economy : the natural rate of interest has fallen due to weak growth, the ageing population and a sort of anxiety in the global economy leading to demand for very safe assets, like government bonds. but for monetary policy to work and stimulate the economy, the interest rates set by the central bank have to be below this equilibrium rate. if one wants to return to a situation in which savings generate returns and conditions are supportive for the financial sector, criticising the central bank achieves nothing. action needs to be taken on the fundamentals to boost returns on capital, which would naturally lead to interest rates increasing, and the central bank could follow. on the other hand, it is true that the fact that the yield curve is flat, in other words that interest rates are low across the maturity spectrum, is weighing on the financial sector. indeed, the difference between the long - term performance of savings and the short - term cost of funding is currently almost zero. but what is weighing even more heavily on the profitability of european banks is that they have a cost base that is much higher than that of banks in the united states, japan, the united kingdom and scandinavia, and that, in certain countries, they have nonperforming loans on their balance sheet that no longer yield a return. and finally, there are too many banks in europe and consolidation has not started. so, we need fewer banks in the euro area? the banking union hasn ’ t yet enabled consolidation within the sector. we need to see crossborder m & a activity in the banking sector, and we also need to overcome a number of obstacles to banking activity. but the banking union has played a useful role in stabilising a sector that is now much more robust than it was in 2012, since the ecb has taken on the role of banking supervisor and has strengthened capital and liquidity requirements. it is important to recognise that one of the