Progress in this field is tremendous, but more is yet to come. Those parts of the European financial markets that are crucial to the transmission of the Eurosystem’s monetary policy are already integrated to our satisfaction. The wholesale market for interbank liquidity in the euro area is now actually a single European money market.
In addition, European banks are interconnected in a common payment-system infrastructure. And improvements to the euro-area-wide payment system are being undertaken. A few days ago, the plus Bundesbank launched its new payment system RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement), which improves security, reduces liquidity needs and expedites settlements of gross payments.