It is clear that efforts to strengthen the recovery have to be undertaken. In the financial sector, remaining fragilities in the banking sector need to be fixed and the banking union completed. Otherwise, market participants will continue to fear that local vulnerabilities could eventually spread and destabilise the European banking system before all the firefighting tools are ready to be deployed.
Second, the off-balance-sheet positions which are not shown in the statistics are of particular importance for assessing the degree of risk to which the financial institutions are exposed. In that respect, I feel that European banks bear less of a burden.