as regards fiscal policy is a bold political endeavour. i do believe that by going back with great determination to the letter and the spirit of the stability and growth pact we will make a jump in terms of governance of the 16 members of the euro area, and that jump is overdue. moreover, the 2020 agenda is also extremely important to reinforce economic governance in the eu as a whole, at the level of the 27. il sole 24 ore : a last word : are you optimistic that emu will survive the current crisis? trichet : absolutely. sometimes, we don ’ t realize how much europe has achieved in the last half a century. the founding fathers could not even imagine the creation of a parliament elected by universal polling, of a european court of justice determining jurisprudence for europe as a whole, of a fully integrated single market and of a single currency, today for 330 million fellow citizens and 16 countries. europe has also proved in the past two years that it was able to cope with the worst global crisis since world war i. this has been in particular true for the central banks, the ecb as well as the national central banks, in italy banca d ’ italia. we are experiencing a challenging historical period at a global level and i am fully confident in the capacities of europe and of emu to surmount the difficulties of the time.

sabine lautenschlager : the european banking sector – growing together and growing apart speech by ms sabine lautenschlager, member of the executive board of the european central bank and vice - chair of the supervisory board of the single supervisory mechanism, at the lse german symposium, london, 2 march 2017. * * * two major events provide the frame for my speech today. both of them took place in june – one in 2012, the other in 2016. one of them took place in brussels, the other here in the united kingdom. one of them made europe grow together ; the other made europe grow apart. on 28 june 2012 in brussels, the leaders of the eu decided to take banking supervision to the european level and explore the idea of a fully fledged banking union. they took a decisive step towards a more united europe. on 23 june 2016, the people of this country voted to leave the european union. they took a decisive step away from a united europe. both events – while very different in nature – will fundamentally change europe. from the perspective of banks and their supervisors, both events have had and will have a huge impact. let us take a closer look. growing together – european banking supervision in june 2012, the euro area was a bad place to be – if you were an investor, a bank or a country that had lost the trust of the markets. on 1 june that year, the financial times wrote “ spain suffers €100 billion exodus ”. in the days thereafter, its front - page stories focused on ailing portuguese and spanish banks. in mid - june, its headline was “ fears rise over eu handling of debt crisis ”. by then the markets had driven the bond yields of some euro area countries to new heights. in other words, if the governments of those countries wanted to sell bonds to finance their debt they would have to pay much more. the media started speculating about a break - up of the euro area, as did some politicians. two weeks later though, something had obviously changed. on the last day of june, the financial times, on its front page, said “ markets rebound following eu deal ”. what had happened? what had happened was that an eu summit had taken place in brussels. there, the leaders of the eu agreed on a package of measures to stabilise the euro area. they decided on a €120 billion pact for growth ; they decided that the rescue funds, the european financial stability facility and the european