Today it is only around half its pre-crisis peak.3 So, if we truly want to boost the euro’s international role, it’s essential that governments and regulators are committed to building a genuine capital markets union. And here the ECB can contribute, in particular by providing safe and innovative market infrastructures under European jurisdiction, and by acting as an accelerator in payments solutions.
Already Europe has gone a long way in this direction. In 2018, for example, we launched TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) – a Europe-wide instant payments service. But these achievements are not sufficient for us to consider our payments landscape autonomous – especially in the retail space where payments are becoming more digital and nonEuropean solutions dominate.