I therefore wish to thank you for the invitation, but also to welcome you to the 14th Conference on Payments and Market Infrastructures, which our friends and colleagues from the Republic of North Macedonia, together with the central bank of the Netherlands, have been holding for years already, and with great success, I must add.
As the years go by, new topics arise, new achievements are made, and payment services and the network of market infrastructures are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. This tells us, to my satisfaction, that we, as a society, are developing for the better. English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon said that “knowledge is power”.