mr. tietmeyer ’ s address at the international frankfurt banking evening co - speaker ’ s address by the president of the deutsche bundesbank, prof. hans tietmeyer, following the lecture “ achieving a credible currency for europe ” held by dr. sirkka hamalainen, governor of the bank of finland at the international frankfurt banking evening on 5 / 5 / 98. i sirkka, first of all, thank you very much for having come and for your extremely interesting speech. you have spoken to us this evening with dual authority : on the one hand, as the governor of a highly successful national central bank and, on the other, as a prospective member of the ecb executive board. in the face of such concentrated authority in your address, there is hardly anything pertinent that i can add. i can only emphasise one of the core sentences of the speech you addressed to the ncb governors, and which is certainly true of the board members as well : “ the interests of the entire euro area must always come first. ” without any doubt, this rule is the crucial cornerstone of the ecb in achieving credibility. the topic of our gathering this evening is “ achieving a credible currency for europe ”. nominating sirkka hamalainen to the executive board of the ecb is, however, without any doubt an invaluable step on the way to a credible currency for europe. i am sure that you, sirkka, will be a jewel in the crown of the - hopefully - stable euro. by the way, in brussels a number of men were likewise earmarked for the executive board. but they are, of course, not so important - not, at least, this evening. sirkka, sincerest congratulations! we are all delighted that you are going to become a frankfurt central banker. i wish you, for our own sakes, every success. - to begin with, of course, on the way to your definitive appointment. - and particularly in your office here in frankfurt, from the summer onwards. [UNK] ii however, not everything that happened last weekend in brussels contributed to the necessary expectation that the euro will be a really supranational and depoliticised currency. i would like to make three remarks on the decisions which were taken in brussels last weekend. 1. the compromise reached in brussels over the weekend on filling the office of president of the european central bank is a decision taken by the political authorities which we take

jens weidmann : monetary union as a stability union speech by dr jens weidmann, president of the deutsche bundesbank, at the duitsland instituut, amsterdam, 7 april 2014. * 1. * * introduction dear professor nijhuis, dear dr plecher - hochstrasser, dear dr ullersma, dear klaas, ladies and gentlemen, i thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity to speak here today. the duitsland instituut ’ s mission is to increase knowledge of germany and disseminate this knowledge to a wide audience in the netherlands. i am glad to join in this effort today, though i will confine myself to the bundesbank ’ s take on matters of the economic and monetary union. adding more issues to that would probably constitute an overburdening of the monetary policymaker you see before you. and overburdening monetary policy is of course anathema to the bundesbank. to me, it seems particularly befitting to talk about the challenges of the intricate construction that is our monetary union here in amsterdam. as you know better than i do, up until the 12th century, the area of what is today known as the province of holland was basically considered uninhabitable. the area consisted mostly of swampland and morass, and was traversed by many rivers. it took the erection of a dam to protect a small patch of land from the amstel river and the tireless effort of pushing countless wooden piles up to 18 meters deep into the ground to lay a foundation that proved solid enough. solid enough to pave some roads and to build the first houses of what would later become the city of amsterdam. nobody would claim now that it was not worth the effort. amsterdam is both unique and beautiful. and this is where the european monetary union comes in. there are surely more obvious places to build a currency union than in europe. without a doubt the euro area lacks some of the characteristics of an optimal currency area. labour mobility, for instance, is much lower than in the us ; plus the business cycles are not synchronised, nor is there any central fiscal stabiliser. at the end of the day, the decision to create the european monetary union was a political one, not an economic one. but i am positive that if we learn from the sovereign debt crisis and do not falter in our efforts to push enough piles