In the process, I think we have learned to appreciate the complexity of this enormous undertaking. One conclusion I have drawn from my observations over the years is that many of the reforms Europe is pursuing on its path to monetary unification -- including fiscal stabilization, tax harmonization, welfare and labor market reform, trade liberalization, and capital market integration -are goals that are worth pursuing in their own right and for which EMU provides a consistent frame of reference. Continued progress toward furthering these broad-based goals is in the interest not only of Europe but also of the United States. There can be no question that the United States has benefited greatly in the past two decades from Europe’s deepening integration. Europe has provided a steady opening of markets for American products and served as a source of an increasingly efficient supply of goods to U.S. households and firms. Europe’s growing participation in international capital markets, which a successful EMU and a strong euro are intended to further, has also encouraged an increasing flow of savings between Europe and the United States in response to changing macroeconomic conditions in our two regions. We in the United States have much at stake in Europe’s and EMU’s future and we stand ready to work with you and support you in the furtherance of your historic efforts. BIS Review 109/1997
They should lead by example, notably by supplying the new European payment instruments to their clients and by ensuring that the retail payment system they operate complies with the interoperability principle enshrined in the SEPA project. 2.2. Acting as a facilitator of market and regulatory evolutions  Turning to the involvement of the Eurosystem in payment systems issues as a facilitator of market and regulatory evolutions, it is fair to say that this mode of action has been mainly used in the field of retail payments to support the SEPA project. The SEPA project was launched in 2002 by the European banking community under the aegis of the Eurosystem and the European Commission. The banking industry has taken on the responsibility of delivering the SEPA products, in particular the specifications of the new European instruments. The European Commission, which grants a great importance to the SEPA project in so far as the latter contributes to the achievement of the common market and the completion of the Lisbon agenda, has elaborated a legal framework for payment services in the European Union. It made public, in December 2005, a directive proposal that should be adopted at the European level before being transposed in national laws by 2008. Since 1999, the Eurosystem’s central banks have been actively promoting, at European and national levels, the establishment of a SEPA.