Hence, the keel has been laid for a single market for retail payments. And not just the single market for the euro area, but for Europe as a whole. SEPA and also the Payment Services Directive (PSD) are standardising retail payments across the EU-27. So what does that mean for the UK market? The UK banking market is highly interconnected with the euro area. We also see that several UK banks are actively involved in the SEPA process. They have recognised that the implications of SEPA extend to their UK business too. Ladies and Gentlemen, SEPA is not just about cross-border payments in euro and in continental Europe, it is about changing the retail payments infrastructure throughout the whole of Europe, including the UK, about bringing it up to a higher level of efficiency, quality and security. For example, the European PSD will significantly reduce transaction times to a maximum of three days and requires full transparency on the currency conversion. This will bring significant benefits to all bank customers – consumers and corporates, also in the UK. Let me in the following give you three major achievements of the SEPA process and outline briefly the way forward of the SEPA project. What has been achieved so far, and what are the next steps? The SDD launch has been the greatest SEPA achievement this year, and perhaps even of the entire project. The preparations for the launch of SEPA Direct Debit have taken up a lot of the banking industry’s time and energy.
Sweden is not alone in changing its approach to economic stabilisation policy. A similar change of course has taken place in country after country – in fact, this took place very late in Sweden – in which context the deregulation of the financial markets nationally and internationally played a crucial role. Sweden’s economic successes during this century are the result of an openness towards the surrounding world, a large foreign trade, and the growth of large multinational companies. It would not have been possible to adopt a completely different approach than liberalisation of foreign exchange legislation and the capital market without very large costs for Sweden. It can therefore be said that the alternative to the new approach to economic policy would not have been feasible. However, this also says that when the present economic order changes, then Sweden will follow the tide. No economic policy regime lasts forever. To date we can distinguish at least five distinct regimes/epochs this century. History has not come to an end. 6. Conclusion The principles I have outlined above are illustrated by the Riksbank’s policy this spring. At the special monetary policy meeting on 2 November, the repo rate was at 3.4 per cent. The Riksbank noted then that at that interest rate inflation would be less than the target of two per cent in one or two years’ time.