Today, the euro accounts for 20% of international reserves, second only to the dollar. An internationally recognised currency generates economic gains: financial markets are more attractive to domestic and foreign investors, more liquid, and thus more efficient. But it also carries a political weight: when Mario Draghi speaks at the G20, the whole world listens to Europe attentively, just as when Janet 2/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  Yellen speaks for the United States. Overall, this list of benefits is impressive, particularly when you think that the euro is only 18 years old. More importantly, we have come this far despite the global financial crisis, which triggered the deepest recession in three generations, and despite the euro area sovereign debt crisis a few years later. 2. Let me now turn to monetary policy: the euro has passed the stress test of the crises. a. Monetary policy Successful crisis management The Eurosystem has deployed an innovative and resolute monetary policy strategy, which has helped stabilise the euro area economy and reduce the costs of crises. Let me briefly recall what we have done [slide]. We had first to face, like you, the consequences of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Like many other central banks, we reacted promptly by offering unlimited liquidity to financial intermediaries, sharply lowering our main refinancing rate and providing international swap lines. Yet, this was only our first challenge. The Lehman episode paved the way for the euro area sovereign debt crisis and its amplification through the “bank-sovereign” nexus.
This means that we will assess the effects of these measures and adapt them, if necessary: (1) to confirm that they continue to fulfil their monetary policy objectives; (2) to ensure – within our mandate – that the relevant measures continue to support the decarbonisation path to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and the EU climate neutrality objectives; (3) to respond to future improvements in climate data and climate risk modelling or changes in regulation; and (4) to look beyond climate and address additional environmental challenges, within our mandate. While I understand it is not a specific topic covered in today's conference, a similar commitment to fully incorporate climate-related and environmental risks applies to our banking supervision tasks and responsibilities. In addition to the climate stress test that was concluded by ECB Banking Supervision earlier this year, we will soon publish the results of our thematic review. As part of this exercise, our core banking supervision teams – Joint Supervisory Teams – thoroughly assessed to what extent banks' risk management practices for climate-related and environmental risks live up to the supervisory expectations we published in 2020. We conducted this exercise to assess where banks stand with regard to our expectations and to highlight any gaps they urgently need to close. We will also take the opportunity to identify and share best practices to help banks close any gaps identified.