money don't go far enough to address the needs of tomorrow. this is not just a question of monetary sovereignty, but also of efficiency and transaction costs. the answer could well be commercial bank money created by credit institutions, but in a tokenised form, alongside central bank money. let us also bear in mind that major payment solutions are run by companies with headquarters outside the european union, such as global credit card schemes or the bigtech firms i mentioned. thus, a digital euro could also strengthen the sovereignty of europe in payments. 3 what could a digital euro look like? the payment market of today is a well - established symbiotic relationship between the private and public sectors. central banks provide access to money in the public interest, they issue banknotes and distribute coins. they also operate their own financial market infrastructures, settling in central bank money and serving as the backbone for the entire payment architecture. in this way, central banks ensure safe and efficient payments, providing the blood flow that keeps the economy alive. the private sector, on the other hand, operates successfully at the interface to the customer and drives the momentum that fosters innovation. commercial banks run customer accounts and have a long - standing history of managing the customer experience. when it comes to a digital euro, we would be well - advised to stick to this successful work - sharing model between the public and private sectors. markus brunnermeier, one of germany's most decorated economists and a professor at princeton, referred to the cooperation between commercial banks and central banks as the most pronounced form of public - private partnership that we have in our economies. 5 i can only agree with that. preserving this model of public - private partnership will be key to the success of a digital euro. what could this public - private cooperation look like in practice? one option the eurosystem is considering is known as the payment scheme approach : the 3 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches eurosystem, as a public actor, would develop, in cooperation with the private sector, a common rule - based framework. supervised intermediaries would participate in this scheme and use this common basis to offer their own products to their own customer base. therefore, it is clear that the eurosystem will operate neither accounts nor wallets for end - users. by pursuing this approach, we would ensure standardisation facilitating a homogenous end - user experience across the euro area and full interoperability between the different stakeholders and with the

, the job of company directors is to ensure that management is doing everything necessary to maximize profits and stock values, no matter what the circumstances. any company that does not operate this way will soon find itself losing to the competition. another misconception is that a relatively low exchange rate puts a country at a disadvantage in terms of foreign takeovers. here, i would say that if canadian companies became more attractive in recent years to us corporate buyers, it was primarily because of high stock market valuations in the united states, not because of a lower canadian dollar. high stock prices essentially provided us companies with very cheap financing for corporate takeovers in countries where market valuations were lower. we saw a similar process involving canadian takeovers of foreign companies more recently, when stock market valuations hit very high levels in this country. concluding thoughts let me summarize my main points. in view of our close economic and financial links with the united states, i recognize the attractions of the reduced currency uncertainty and lower transactions costs that would be part of a fixed exchange rate arrangement with the us dollar. nonetheless, i believe that for canada, the macroeconomic advantages of a flexible exchange rate continue to far outweigh the lower transactions costs of a fixed rate. as long as we remain a major producer of primary commodities, and as long as we want to pursue separate economic policies that are suited to our own circumstances and that require differing monetary conditions, the shock - absorber element of a floating currency will serve us well. does a floating exchange rate regime mean that we are likely to have a persistently weak currency? no, it does not. through the second half of the 1990s, we have seen a us dollar that is strong against virtually all other currencies, reflecting the remarkable performance of the us economy. in the process, however, the united states has also built up a very large cumulative deficit in its transactions with the rest of the world. at some stage, this external deficit will have to be reversed, and a lower us dollar will be part of this adjustment. here in canada, after a slow start in the early 1990s, the fundamentals of our economy have improved. growth has been more robust in recent years, employment and incomes have been rising, and inflation is low and stable. government budget deficits have been eliminated, and the public debt relative to the size of our economy has been shrinking. moreover, as part of a major restructuring effort by the private sector, businesses have been investing heavily