The economic consequences of adjustment  A comprehensive process of restructuring and reform such as we are seeing in the euro area naturally has economic consequences. Let me turn to those consequences in the second part of my remarks. As the public sector is consolidating, and the private sector is deleveraging and rebalancing towards exports, the external sector has to go into surplus for a period of time. The euro area current account surplus is expected to rise above 2% this year. There have been some claims recently that this constitutes a “beggar-thy-neighbour” approach as Europe is importing global demand. I find this quite contradictory. Observers cannot call on the one hand for Europe to avoid the mistakes of Japan, and then on the other hand criticise Europe for the inevitable consequences of doing so. It is also a very short-term view. Europe’s contribution to global demand in the years before the crisis came largely through governments, firms and households taking on too much debt. This had to change. The ongoing process of reform and restructuring will allow Europe to support global demand in the future – but in a sustainable and stable way. I would add that ensuring balanced growth between major economies would be greatly helped by efforts to accelerate regional free trade agreements, in particular the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between Europe and the US.
I am sure that the participants in the different sessions scheduled today will elaborate more on the best economic policies to ensure that globalisation and technological innovation will continue contributing to economic growth and prosperity in an increasing number of countries. Ladies and gentlemen, I leave the floor now to the President of the Executive Committee of the European Institute of the Mediterranean, Mr. Senén Florensa, thanking him for the cooperation in the organisation of this event and, of course, thanking you all for your presence here today. 4/4