Over the years the economy has become more resilient to these price changes but we still guard against their sudden reversals. While the current slowdown in the US does not pose a major threat to our exporters, we need to be on our guard against US steel interests seeking to introduce further curbs against steel imports as occurred a couple of years earlier.
In autumn 2016 we announced the launch of an investigation into the future development of our market infrastructure. The projects that are relevant in this context are: 1. the TARGET instant payment settlement (TIPS) service; and 2. the consolidation of TARGET2 and TARGET2-Securities (T2S). Now, half a year later, I can say that good progress has been made.