And it gives the funding fathers of the European Union the most extraordinary reward they could have dreamt of fifty years ago. Had we told Jean MONNET in the fifties that one day the six would be twenty-five, that we would not only have a single currency for 306 million people but also a single market for 450 million European producers and consumers and that the reconciliation between Germany, France, Italy and the BENELUX countries was only the prelude for a future intimate Union between a large part of the East of Europe and the full body of the West of your continent, what would have he been likely to say? Perhaps, as is reflected in his memories: It is an extraordinary historical achievement but we will be in the future even more surprised: “the historical evolution of United Europe is unpredictable because nobody can say which new bold changes will be triggered tomorrow by the effects of today's changes”. Whatever new achievements are likely in the future, today the ten new Member States together, with 75 million people, will increase the EU population by about 20%, to more than 450 million people. The economic weight of the new Member States is lower. Their total GDP represents, at market exchange rates, around 5% of that of the current EU. Looking beyond these numbers, the largest ever expansion of the Union in terms of new countries will bring important economic benefits.
A problem that is potentially relevant in systemic terms is the availability of intraday liquidity in foreign currencies, which is typically restricted, if not non-existent. This restriction hampers liquidity management in an integrated multi-currency environment. Nowadays, there is a much more urgent need for market participants to make time-critical payments than previously. Moreover, they must be 5  The Committee of Wise Men (2001): Final Report of the Committee of the Wise Men on the Regulation of European Securities Markets, Brussels. 6  A. Lamfalussy (2001): “Reflections on the Regulation of European Securities Markets”, Société Universitaire Européenne de Recherches Financières, SUERF Study N° 14, Vienna. 7  A. Crockett (2002): Introductory speech at the Third Joint Central Bank Research Conference on Risk Measurement and Systemic Risk, Basel. BIS Review 37/2002  5  able to react simultaneously in several currencies even in troubled circumstances. Their liquidity management could be facilitated and strengthened significantly if they were able to obtain short-term liquidity in the required currency through a cross-border collateral pool. Such a collateral pool would boost the ability of the large market participants to react, thereby reducing the system’s vulnerability to disturbances. In addition, this would result in efficiency gains, as maintaining a pooled collateral portfolio would certainly be less costly than keeping several currency-specific portfolios. In view of the manifold legal and technical obstacles, one is tempted to deem such a collateral pool a vision.