It is an honour to which I attach a lot of value. First of all, heartiest congratulations to all the graduating students. Today marks a milestone in your lives. You will be leaving college with a degree in management, and not just any degree, but a degree from one of the most elite management schools in the country.
While Maastricht retained the national central banks, and built a structure where the Governors of the national central banks would have a structural majority in the main decision making bodies of the European Central Bank, the idea of moving from numerous state currencies to a single non-state currency, tightly constrained to remain at a distance from national governments, was clearly a move in the opposite direction.