Sound management of public finances, firmly based on counter-cyclicality, debt sustainability, and the promotion of growth can help avoid adverse outcomes like this in the future. We should also not under-estimate the damage such episodes do to trust in the euro itself.
-9At a more basic level, we need to focus on access to fast, efficient digital payments. This is a matter both of efficiency and of fairness. Low-income households can ill afford to wait days for their income checks to clear, nor can small businesses.