Therefore, we do see now financial literacy and inclusion high on the global agenda. Thus, in 2010, Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) was established reflecting concerted global efforts that do not solely reflect the need to elevate financial education and literacy to safeguard financial stability. Much more, they are reflection of the understanding that inclusion can help to address poverty and shared prosperity by smoothing household incomes, reducing vulnerability to shocks, enhancing investments in education and health, and encouraging the growth of businesses. In fact, this is why financial inclusion is linked to at least eight of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Global efforts yielded up global improvement. Leveraging on different data sources and the latest 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  conclusions of the Global Partnership, several takeaways can be pinpointed. There is a rise in the financial inclusion. Globally, the share of adults holding an account at a financial institution or through a mobile money service over the years has significantly increased from 51% to 69%. In low-income economies, there are twice as many mobile money accounts than bank accounts per 1,000 adults. (IMF Financial Access Survey). Yet disparities remain. Despite this progress, 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked and inequalities persist. Women in developing countries remain 9 percentage points and globally, by 4 percentage points less likely to have an account than men. Small and medium-sized businesses are mostly excluded from formal borrowing, despite increasingly having an account at a financial service provider.
It is fairly understandable that certain EU member states support the current, rather non-transparent way of modifying the institutional set-up: it is the only way for them to maintain or even strengthen the draconian mix I just described. 2  BIS Review 165/2009  Given that European integration is taking place in this “European” way (in the bad sense of the word), it is no wonder that standard democratic politics has not left the national level: all formally EU-wide ideas are always translated in each individual member state into the local political context; there are no true EU-wide political parties, no true EU-wide politicians, no true EU-wide media. The debate in EU institutions rarely follows the lines that we are used to in standard political debates, such as whether we want more freedom or more redistribution. Instead, most time is spent, as I said, on procedures and institutions. The official efforts at gradual political integration thus give the impression of squaring the circle. These awkward traits in politics at the EU level then lead to some perverse implications. On the one hand, measures which would help Europe to retain a strong economic position – and here I mean especially liberalisation of markets and trade – take years or even decades to implement: the single market for services still does not exist and even the single market for labour still has fundamental exemptions.