This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome that created the European Union and the 25th anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty that created the Monetary Union. Further progress is needed. The institutional architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union remains incomplete in a number of aspects. The crisis has exposed structural weaknesses in our construction and has forced us to address them. The repair has started with the creation of 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  the banking union. But the work is far from over and the challenges we face go beyond Economic and Monetary Union. They pertain to security, migration, defence, and generally all those challenges that can be addressed only by pooling sovereignty. And these challenges are greater than in the past. Today we can sense a rising wave of energy in demanding joint European action. The European Union and the euro always commanded the support of the majority of European citizens, but, often, it was only the vocal opposition that was heard. Now this silent majority has regained its voice, its pride, and its self-confidence. Only by working together can the nations of Europe overcome these challenges. The opportunity for progress is real. Values and judgement lie at the heart of all our undertakings. But they need to be supported by continuing research, ever increasing knowledge, and uncompromising examination of facts.
Mario Draghi: Response on receipt of an Honorary Doctorate from Tel Aviv University Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, on the receipt of an Honorary Doctorate from Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 18 May 2017. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, It is my privilege to speak to you tonight, on behalf of all those whom you distinguished by awarding an honorary doctorate of the University of Tel Aviv. We come from different fields of human endeavour. Politics, policy, business, history and of course fundamental research. Our achievements are diverse. But they are all based on careful accumulation, experimentation and exploitation of knowledge. Knowledge created and fostered by universities such as yours. And I cannot but detect the profound influence of this search for knowledge in my memory of recent events. The eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis in Europe, caused a deep recession worldwide, a sharp increase in unemployment and exposed the incompleteness of some parts of the EU institutional architecture. Fertile conditions to give voice to populist and nationalistic rhetoric. But that period of crisis was also conducive to improving our understanding of economic and political forces, and to translating this new knowledge into action. The crisis has thus resulted in a form of creative destruction, where established paradigms have been critically revisited, where flawed practices have been exposed and replaced by sounder ones and where new research addressed previously neglected aspects of our societies.