4  Van Beers, N., Bijlsma, M. and Zwart, G., “Cross-country insurance mechanisms in currency unions: an empirical assessment”, Bruegel Working Papers, 2014/04, 2014; International Monetary Fund, “Towards a fiscal union for the euro area: technical background notes”, September 2013, available at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2013/sdn1309tn.pdf. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  The design of a capital markets union – regulatory harmonisation and institutional efficiency The Commission will soon present a first proposal on what a capital markets union could look like in practice. This proposal will then be submitted for public consultation. The details are not yet known, but I would like to share with you some of my ideas about an effective capital markets union. For me, the term “capital markets union” means more than simply tinkering with existing regulation. It means addressing areas that are politically sensitive as well, such as disclosure requirements for companies, supervision of the financial infrastructure, insolvency law and EU-wide harmonisation of capital gains tax regulation. We have already achieved a great deal in the field of payment systems, having broken down barriers and significantly reduced costs for citizens since we introduced the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), although the existing legislation now needs to be implemented with full force. We want to do the same in the medium term for the cross-border use of credit cards: in a monetary union, there should be no “roaming” fees when it comes to making payments.
Yves Mersch: Advancing Monetary Union Speech by Mr Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Euro Exhibition, Osnabrück, 25 January 2015. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, Euro banknotes and coins are not just a means of payment. The bridges and arches on our banknotes are a symbol of European integration. They stand for the fact that there is a lot which connects us within the Monetary Union, and that our once so divided continent has succeeded in overcoming these deep divisions, as the crisis has recently shown. Our common currency also therefore stands for shared values. “Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities” have been some of the accession criteria for membership of the EU since the European Council in Copenhagen in June 1993; “Membership presupposes the candidate’s ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.” 1 The recently published legal opinion of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in the case of Peter Gauweiler and the Die Linke party against the ECB on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme also refers to these constitution-like shared legal values. This “constitutional compact” underlies European integration and includes the German constitutional principle of constitutional identity review – it does not exclude it.