Three of them are major challenges that equally apply to all the long industrialised countries. The last two others are specific to Europe and do not exist anywhere else in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that your conference on “Finance and Modernisation” will deliver useful insights into today’s challenges from a historical perspective. The statute of the European Association for Banking and Financial History points out that its conferences and symposia are “focusing on areas of historical research that have important practical implications for modern day banking and finance”.