Furthermore, European investors have substantially diversified their bond portfolios since the introduction of the euro, prompted by the removal of the exchange rate risk. This enables them to achieve better performances for a given level of portfolio risk. 4  BIS Review 96/2001  Additionally, I would like to draw your attention to current trends in mergers or close cooperation between stock exchanges, securities settlement systems, clearing houses, and similar institutions. Had the euro not been created, would it have been thinkable that the Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam exchanges merge to create EURONEXT and recently conclude another major alliance ? Undeniably, the introduction of the euro is fostering very large-scale market restructuring throughout Europe. There are still some barriers to further integration of EU capital markets. In this regard, the Eurosystem has welcomed the objective of the European Council meeting in Lisbon in March 2000, to accelerate completion of the internal market for financial services, and to set a tight timetable so that the Financial Services Action Plan may be implemented by 2005 ; a regular review of this Plan is made by European authorities, and progress is well under way.
Coordination was also one of the questions discussed in the report by a working group at the Bank for International Settlements, where I was chair, see the Bank for International Settlements (2011). 15  See H M Treasury (2013), which points out, for instance, that "The Government intends that the frameworks for monetary policy and macro-prudential policy, operated by the MPC and FPC of the Bank of England respectively, should be coordinated” (p. 5), and “In order to foster coordination between monetary and macroprudential policy, there is overlap between the membership of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee” (p. 10). BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  be what one can call a holistic, or comprehensive, view when formulating both types of policy. If both the credit cycle and the business cycle are to be stabilised in a good way, I do not believe that they can be too far from the policy mix implied by full coordination, at least not over a long period of time. The two types of policy could then counteract or reinforce one another in ways that would be harmful to the economy. It is probably also the case that this interplay is particularly important in sensitive situations, such as preventing a credit boom going too far and ensuring that the credit cycle has a slow, soft downturn instead of a rapid, dramatic one.