We as central bankers are concerned here with avoiding overburdening monetary policy by the next recession, but it is of course the responsibility of politicians to act. 1/ The first cliché that emerges when we talk about reforming the euro area is the opposition between vision – be it French or otherwise – and pragmatism – seen as a northern European virtue. We must be practical, and take real needs and particularly those of businesses and entrepreneurs as our starting point. At the same time, we need a political ambition if we are to act – call it a “vision” if you wish. Today, the key to growth in the euro area is investment and innovation. But to innovate, in digital technology or in the energy transition for example, companies need to be able to take more risks, which requires more equity financing over the 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  long term, rather than debt financing. The euro area is seriously lagging behind in this respect: equity capital amounted to only 73% of GDP in the third quarter of 2017, compared to 123% in the United States. This brings me to my first solution for strengthening our Economic Union: a European-level "Financing Union for Investment and Innovation", which would better channel the euro area’s EUR 350 billion savings surplus into equity financing for innovation, in digital or renewable energy technologies.
At the same time, supervisors will benefit from easier exchange of information. And the framework offers the flexibility to incorporate future modifications with lower costs. Overall, these positive effects should lead to higher quality in the information flows generated. I should say at this point that neither of these projects has been easy. If you consider that the European Union is currently made up of 25 countries, you can well imagine that the starting situation was complex, with each country requiring its banks to submit different information. In fact, the differences were not limited to the definitions used by each Member State, but also related to the reporting systems, and the technologies and formats used. But I would argue that it has been a very worthwhile initiative, and one that will reap benefits for years to come. 3  Increased reliance on business information  Let me turn now to the third element that I believe is important for success. I believe that regulators should put increased reliance on information generated and used by institutions within their own business. Let me set the context for this remark. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that, over recent years, the Basel II initiative has driven a paradigm shift in regulatory attitudes. Regulation used to be something that was rather imposed on institutions “to be complied with”, and seen by them as completely separate from their own internal business processes, and therefore an additional cost.