The work conducted under the aegis of the G20, in which the Banque de France played a leading role, has confirmed that a CBDC can bring benefits in this area. However, to fully exploit this potential, central banks will need to coordinate their efforts to ensure that CBDCs in different jurisdictions are interoperable. In its experiments on a wholesale CBDC, the Banque de France tested the main multipleCBDC arrangements identified in the literature. As described in the report published by the Banque de France on 8 November, these experiments showed the different ways in which CBDCs can be made interoperable and highlighted the benefits of a CBDC in a cross-border setting (e.g. more efficient correspondent banking, settlement security). Lastly, choices will need to be made so that the CBDC interacts smoothly with private initiatives such as the EPI project, in order to strengthen the integration of the European payments market. CONCLUSION To conclude, I would like to come back to a question that comes up regularly, about the future role of banks and commercial bank money in a world of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, and respond with one conviction and one wish. My conviction is that, given the way in which investigations are being conducted into a digital euro, which I have just summed up here, it is unlikely that banks will be erased from a future payments landscape in which stablecoins and central bank digital currency dominate.
Thomas Jordan: The challenges of the global economic crisis – can Switzerland master them? Summary of a speech by Mr Thomas Jordan, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, on the occasion of a panel discussion at the Central Bank of the Republic of Austria, Vienna, 1 February 2011. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website. *  *  *  Many countries are facing major economic challenges as a result of the financial and economic crisis. Which of these are of particular importance for Switzerland? And how can we tackle them? Switzerland is currently facing three key challenges. First, the crisis has shown that countries can encounter serious difficulties due to systemically important banks. Switzerland has two systemically important banks, in fact, these big banks are systemically important even at the global level. Thus for our country, in particular, it is essential that the stability of the financial system be sustainably reinforced. Second, the crisis has substantially changed the economic environment in which Switzerland – an economy with an extremely global orientation – operates. On the one hand, our country has to cope with the appreciation of the Swiss franc, particularly against the euro, which has come under pressure because of the sovereign debt crisis affecting certain European countries. On the other hand, the crisis has reinforced the shift in economic power towards the emerging economies.