It is rather a symptom of what might possibly be termed ‘temporary growing pains’. It remains to be seen how serious this setback will be, above all for the U.S. economy, but sooner or later the transformation will pick up speed again. How far have we come in the IT revolution? Turning now from history to our own time, the question of how far we have come is obviously not an easy one to answer. It has been calculated that the economic impact of technical advances such as IT 5 takes forty to fifty years to materialise in full. If the microprocessor’s breakthrough in the early 1970s constitutes the starting point, then it will presumably be another couple of decades before any sizeable economic effects are discernible. Counting instead from the invention of the computer in the mid 1940s, however, means that we could already be in the beginning of a phase of rising productivity and growth. Nevertheless, I believe it is till early to be able to provide an unequivocal answer to this question. What is clear is that electronics and microprocessors have revolutionised telecommunications and household appliances such as TV sets, videos and music equipment. We give little thought to the fact that microchips are now to be found in the simplest kitchen appliances. They are a part of our daily round. Bear in mind, moreover, that there are no doubt applications that have not yet been exploited with the more powerful and, above all, cheaper capacity of new computers.
Firms need this in order to raise equity and find European venture capital; keeping a European capacity in investment banking is a strategic imperative. Financial players need this in order to conduct cross-border mergers: European banking consolidation is overdue, and it is indispensable, not to reduce competition – quite the opposite – but to reach the critical mass necessary to make digital investments and allow savings to circulate. And, lastly, the euro area needs it in order to finally have an effective economic stabilisation tool to weather the shocks affecting some countries: “private risk sharing” is effective between states in the United States. If one doesn’t want a fiscal union – duly noted –, one must make even more resolute progress on the Capital Markets Union. We have talked enough about this, and it is now time to take concrete  Page 2 sur 5 measures: this must be the ambition of the new Commission. The ECB will support it, and France will be a committed player. My second prerequisite is the successful implementation of Basel III. It is vital that we do not forget the lessons from the financial crisis, nor break the promise we made in 2017. But this transposition must be fair – naturally involving the United States – and reasonable. The first estimates of capital requirements are premature and do not give the horizon: Basel III will be finalised only in 2027.