It is these risks that are particularly relevant for risk management in banks, following an economic dictum that has been attributed to several people over the years, including an author of science fiction novels and an American General. The general was Leonard Porter Ayres, who also worked as a statistician and economist. When asked by a group of reporters to impart some words of wisdom gathered from his long years of economic study, Ayres replied: “It is an immutable economic fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch.” I am pretty sure that everyone in this room has used that phrase at least once. Translated into the language of finance, it reads: whoever wants to make a profit has to take a risk. The returns, however, are mostly generated right away, whereas the risk might only materialise in the future. This is where good risk management comes into play. Banks and the entire banking system have indeed become much more resilient to shocks. Nevertheless, good risk management is still necessary. It should enrich decision-making by providing a medium and long-term view, and it should highlight the downside to every upside. In a way, risk managers have to be the spoilsports. The same is, of course, true for banking supervisors. One of the tasks of banking supervisors is to ask questions when things are going well, and to intervene when they are not. Therefore, risk managers, as well as banking supervisors, explicitly advocate a forwardlooking, risk-based approach.
On the other hand, we must make a CBDC available on these infrastructures to match market demand for tokens, so that our settlement asset is not substituted by private assets – which would be riskier. ***  The two projects of a wholesale and retail CBDC are two faces of the same “mountain”, which is the ambition to offer a digital form of central bank money to combine innovation and trust in the payment system. I spoke at the start about the 'existential' monetary partnership between central banks and commercial banks. The trust/innovation nexus is just as existential. It does not entirely coincide with the former: commercial banks can rightfully inspire confidence; central banks are capable of innovation, the CBDC is proof of that. But one thing is for sure: it is together that we can succeed in strengthening Europe's strategic autonomy. Thank you for your attention. Page 7 sur 7 References i  François Villeroy de Galhau, Central banks and finance in the face of a triple revolution, speech, November 2021. ii François Villeroy de Galhau, Roads for the future: central bank digital currency (CBDC) and innovative payments, speech, June 2021.