Ardian Fullani: Imagine the future – for a better economic cooperation. Economic chamber’s and bank’s responsibilities Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the 10th Vienna Economic Forum, Vienna, 7 May 2014. *  *  *  Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear colleagues and participants of the Vienna Economic Forum, I am honoured and delighted to return and speak to such a constructive and important economic forum, discussing with you the economic development topics, which affect the present and the future of our economies. The topic of this forum is very important for the economies of the South East Europe. It creates the proper environment, which enables the examination of the problems faced by our economies during the crises. We can certainly draw few lessons from what we have learned during the recent years, following the global economic and financial crises. These discussions and the harmonization of economic policies will help us to project a strong coordinated economic structure for the long term future of our economies. It is particularly important to converge here in Vienna and discus the cooperation issue because one of the obvious outcomes (lessons) of the developments during the recent years is that the economic developments in particular for small open economies of the South East European region, are not local or regional anymore. Just like the flu, it is rather unexceptional and highly transmittable from one economy to the other, from one sector of the economy to the other.
Most importantly, European economies and their financial systems, among which the Austrian financial system enjoys a significant share of the market, define the globalization for the region and are, to a large extent, important determinants for the success or failure of these economies. Given the large share of the European financial groups, they have and will play an important role in the transmission of global shocks in the region. What is more important, they have a significant role in the transmission of legislative and regulative shocks carried over by European monetary and supervisory authorities. The size is such that even a simple change in the future business plans of a single European financial institution can transform into real shocks for the economies of the region. It became evident during the crisis and afterwards that an increase in risk and uncertainty, led to increased incentives for banks to withdraw from the Emerging Europe economies. Though this was mostly prevented due to increased cooperation through institutions such as the Vienna Initiative, the concerns from our perspective have not completely dissipated. In this respect the business plan of EU based groups can play a potentially important role in the nature and outcomes of this cooperation.