 Dobroj, a možno se doberi, na konferencije. To je ta najboljša razrednja in tudi čutim, da sem dnosil z tih dobrovih odličenih, in z njimših, so bošnjih, veliki dobrovih odličenih. I zato sem ki je odličen. Njenim tudi na več očenju, da brexit ga bila vse načočen, sem kako v Londonu namošil, da se počti na svetu. Vši izgleda, da so mi dobrovih izgledali. And that was what I was asking myself as well. It was an invitation that came before March, so that's the main reason. But by the time I arrived there, the article 50 deadline had been postponed and Brexit had not happened after all. But it still comes much closer. And with Brexit approaching fast, I feel an even stronger attachment to the European project and an even greater sense of urgency As in almost all discussions on the banking union these days the focus in London was on the parts that are still missing in the construction, on the remaining challenges for our banks and on the difficulties we are grappling with. But we should not forget that back in 2012 not everyone would have put money on the survival of the euro area. Thanks to both the ECB's commitment to preserve the euro and to the EU's agreement on setting up the banking union, the European project was able to survive and to emerge stronger from its worst crisis. The European institutions and member states swung into action and decided to move closer together and deepen our union. We celebrated ECB's commitment during the former President Mario Draghi's farewell last week and today we celebrate the banking union, the five years of the banking union. Because here we are seven years later and five years into our European banking union, once again in difficult times we have more proof that Europe does indeed work, that tackling problems together is far more effective than taking them alone. It is hard to believe that European banking supervision is only five years old. It all happened so very quickly by European standards. It is now well established and has become an irreversible feature of our institutional environment. And it was designed to very high standards, learning from the lessons of the crisis and building on the best supervisory practices from all national authorities. I don't think many people outside our profession can appreciate how difficult the challenge was. I have to pay tribute to my predecessor Daniel Nui and to the previous vice chair Sabin Lauter-Schleger for the deftly steering the project during the demanding startup phase. The success of this endeavor also hinged on the strong commitment from national competent authorities. European banking supervision is a joint project, it is a system. Getting used to this requires time, of course, and it requires effort. We have launched many initiatives to bring together supervisors from across the euro area, always being mindful of the goal of forging relations, exchanging views, devising a common approach and forming a European team. Not just a level of the supervisory board, I'm glad to see so many members of the supervisory board here today, but also at all the levels, at all levels in the national authorities and the ECB staff. Future generations of banking supervisors will only know this new European world. For them it will be natural to work as a team across countries to join forces with others and pursue a common goal. But looking back, even for the first generation, there was an extraordinary quick adaptation and a lot was achieved. And let me take this opportunity also to pay tribute also to the staff, the management and the staff of the ECB for the great many achievements of these first five years. European banking supervision greatly helped to speed up the post crisis repair of banks balance sheets. Banks now have much stronger capital positions, stronger liquidity positions. The ECB's pressure on banks to reduce non-performing loans has led to a significant cleanup. Since 2014, the amount of NPLs has dropped by almost half, from about one trillion to below 600 billion at the end of last year. And we have ensured that future NPLs will be adequately provisioned. We have engaged in a number of foundational projects that have allowed us to raise the bar in all areas of supervision. We are about to finalize our targeted review on internal models, for instance, which is a good example of the effort to reset supervisory standards and with the view to ensuring consistency and fairness across banks. Tens to the progress achieved, European banking supervision is no longer a startup and is now evolving into a more mature system. But what does mature mean? For me, it means that we have agreed on a joint supervisory approach, assembled the tools we need and set up stable processes. In other words, we are approaching a steady state. We are not there yet, but we are approaching it. And our actions now have to become more and more predictable. In practice, we can only be predictable when we are transparent. Because only then will banks, markets and the public be able to understand our principles and policies, only then will they be able to anticipate our actions. And this is crucial. After all, banking supervision should be about stability, should be a source of stability, not of surprises. We have seen a lack of restructuring in the European banking sector. We did not see consolidation reaching a level that would have absorbed the excess capacity that had built up before the crisis. So the system remains highly fragmented. Low interest rates put pressure on banks' margins, while most bank managers struggle to bring down costs. On average, European banks have not been able to ramp up their investments in new technologies and lag behind their international competitors. I often hear people put in blame on regulatory uncertainty for this process. And the market seems to feel that European banks have to deal with the steadily increasing capital requirements. I strongly dispute this idea and believe that there is plenty of evidence in support of my disagreement. Still, we have to address this perception and go the extra mile to provide clear targets and rules of engagement. Transparency, predictability and overall stability of supervisory requirements are essential to enable the structural adjustments that our banking sector needs. It seems, for instance, that our approach to bank mergers is not well understood in the markets, which appears to believe that we require more capital for merged entities. And this is not necessarily the case. The capital we require from any entity, whether newly merged or not, is based on medium-term assessment of the relevant business plan and on continued respect of our requirements. Now, what about banks? What does European banking supervision offer them? Well, it obviously offers more stability, which, after the financial crisis, banks should particularly value. At the same time, it provides a level playing field. Banks should now face a more homogeneous supervisory regime and when doing business across the euro area. It is important to keep in mind that the standing of the supervisory authority is fundamental to the banking industry's reputation as well. Banks nonetheless tend to complain about the burden that they have to shoulder under the new regulatory and supervisory framework. They see a clear link between tighter regulation, stricter supervision and lower profits. But there are other factors that explain why European banks' profits are low, many of which are related to how well or how poorly the banks are managed. So, weakening regulations simply to give banks a helping hand would not solve the problem. My memories of the crisis are still very vivid and I believe that the stability brought to us by Basel III comes at a fair price. But in other areas, I also hear some constructive criticism and see ways to ease the bank's compliance burden. Reporting is a promising area in this regard. Two things stand out. First, it's not just European banking supervisors to whom banks have to report. They also have reporting obligations towards other authorities such as national supervisors, macroprudential authorities and central banks, for instance. More coordination amongst these authorities might ease the burden for banks. Second, we sometimes collect data ad hoc and on top of the regular reporting and we need to do this in order to spot new risks or deepen our understanding of existing risks. But they acknowledge that we could improve our planning and our communication and exercise some discipline and we are working on this right now. And this brings us to my final point. European banking supervision is not an island. It is just one part of the banking union and now I'm going to repeat myself because, as the US author Napoleon Hill said, any idea, plan or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought. So here it is. Our success in making banks safer and sounder hinges on completing the banking union. We still need to erect the banking union's third pillar, European deposit insurance, and we hope to see signs that there is a little bit more openness to move ahead in this project. Depositors must be sure that their money is well protected, no matter whether it is deposited with a bank in France, Italy, Greece or Germany. And only European deposit insurance scheme can decouple this protection from the financial firepower of national schemes. At the same time, it would instantly justify the removal of the remaining obstacles that still hindered full integration of banking business across the entire banking union. During the crisis, countries started to reinforce the national banking systems, leaving a burdensome legacy of segmentation in the European banking market. Our banks cannot yet consider the banking union as their domestic market, a truly single jurisdiction. I'm well aware that the political agreement could be difficult to achieve and take time to be practically implemented. But we cannot accept the current segmentation of the market remains unaddressed. Hence, even without a European deposit insurance, we have a duty to pursue the goal of a more integrated market with all the tools that we have at our disposal. Single European supervision also requires single European regulation. We do have a single European book, single European rule book for banks, but it is not as harmonized as it should be from the banking union perspective. From fit and proper rules to new bank managers for new bank managers to insolvency laws and that's a particularly short point. Maybe we'll discuss it later today. We have often to deal with 19 different legal frameworks. And this makes European banking supervision less effective and more costly. So we do need to harmonize regulation further and sooner rather than later. So let me conclude, ladies and gentlemen. We can now look back at five years of European banking supervision. And we can look ahead to many more. I've presented a few aspects that will be relevant for the future. This list is not exhaustive, of course. And we are as much driven by events outside our control as anyone else. But we do have a vision a truly European banking market in which safe and sound banks serve the economy. We have come closer over the past five years but we are not there yet. And we cannot get there alone. It's a task for all of us, banks, policymakers, national institutions, European institutions and many others. As we step into the future let us carry forward the victories of the past. By winning each other's trust we have become stronger, expanded our cooperation and flourished as a community. Now the time has come to nurture that trust and protect that community. And in order to move forward and complete this European project trust is all we have and trust is all we need. Thank you very much for your attention.