 On the 31st of January 2017 representatives of the financial industry and the public sector came together to discuss the future of Europe's financial market infrastructure in a time of increasing digitalization. The conference was opened by Mario Draghi, president of the ECB. It's a pleasure to welcome you here today to this joint ECB and European Commission conference on Europe's digital integrated market of tomorrow. The Euro system is always on the lookout for ways to improve the efficiency and lower the costs of its market infrastructure. It considers how best to respond to and take advantage of tactical innovation and meet new user needs while staying ahead of evolving risks. New technology has the potential to reshape a whole area of business. It could accelerate settlement processes and make real-time settlement feasible. Cross-border issuance could undoubtedly be made easier and financial reporting be streamlined. During the first panel discussion, the participants gave their views on the progress made in establishing the Capital Markets Union. They also discussed what still needed to be done to remove the remaining barriers to efficient cross-border clearing and settlement in Europe. The actual day-to-day work of T2S will make the remaining barriers more evident, more obviously in need of change and correction, including the hard ones they have to do with ownership of securities, as Olivier was saying before, and taxation issues. The Capital Markets Union project is not about decreasing the amount of bank financing to the economy, it's about complementing it by more capital market funding. There needs to be done a lot of work on the Legislative Fund, but what we also need is really in dialogue, and this is how the Deutsche Börsevention Network came into life, in dialogue with the relevant parties, really develop and understand what will help the most. Let's create the sandbox, the safe space for both parties to observe each other and to play together in a very constructive way. The conference continued with an impassioned speech by Jeremy Rifkin about how the global economy could and should evolve in the digital world. He argued that substantial productivity gains could be achieved with the Internet of Things. By 2030 we will have ubiquitous interconnectivity, everything connected to everything to everyone. This is a global brain. We have millennials who are beginning to transform three basic notions of their identity, how they view freedom, how they view power, and how they view location and identity. Freedom. For the millennials, freedom is not exclusivity, it's inclusivity. It's not ownership, it's access. For them, freedom is the ability to flourish, and they flourish by being in network after network after network where they can openly share their talents open source, it benefits the networks, it benefits their social capital. Completely different idea about freedom. We have to change all the constitutions. Freedom is inclusivity and access, not exclusivity and ownership. So what I would say to you, when you leave this conference, go back to the bank, go back to your lending institution, go back to your pension fund, and tomorrow morning get involved. So the real legacy for this generation of financial community, you have to do the bottom line, I understand it, but the real bottom line is when your grandchildren look back they'll say you did the right thing. Turning more specifically to the future of Europe's market infrastructure, Eve Merche outlines some of the possibilities currently being investigated by the Euro system. Therefore, we believe that it may be worse exploring the establishment of a truly European issuance service, at least to start with for the supranational depth instruments. We could even think about the ECB or the Euro system as a whole playing an active role in setting up such an issuance service. The role we built on T2S. And we could also consider whether and to what extent new technologies such as distributed ledger technology can be used in that process. In the second panel discussion of the day, the participants considered how to make Europe's market infrastructure more efficient, while maintaining safety and reliability. We believe that the stronger will be our market infrastructure, the better off will be all the actor of the financial sector in Europe to offer innovative solutions to the citizen. We need the technology, it is there and it will happen. We need a regulatory environment in which we have innovation and we need to realize that we need security on one hand but we shouldn't exclude. With digitalization, the payment landscapes changes very quickly and it is quite difficult for legislation to cope with the pace of innovation. I believe that we will find solutions in that sphere when we start thinking beyond just the technology. I believe that technology is the enabler, but you have to think in the same time on how business models will evolve. In the cyber security space or in the cyber fraud space, so there are very relevant developments out there and when we look at the financial market infrastructures, we need to bring those thoughts together. When we are in a very integrated, interconnected, interoperable world, if we don't get cyber security right, this also means a huge contagion risk. Digitalization should be a tool to help us to mitigate risks there, by getting the necessary transparency. All the work we do in particular on standardization again and harmonization is very important. With regard to safety and security, Marco Gerker spoke about the increasing sophistication of cyber attacks and how companies need to prepare. We have to be prepared for a development where a lot of things can be substituted and things like are you going to trust your artificial intelligence is going to be really interesting. The attacks that we see right now are more and more complex. We see an increase in quality of attacks against decision makers. The conference closed with a final panel discussion. The participants considered how to make the best use of new technologies to enhance the financial market infrastructure and what the regulatory response should be to the shifting landscape. So it's clear that when we look at innovation in our own industry, we've got to be open-minded. It's really about the future. And that factor is finance is not a national or regional, but is a global game. And if we fragment, if we retrench, if we separate ourselves, if we raise the barriers, if we say you cannot do this here or this that belongs to us, you cannot do it over there, we will not serve the cause of innovation. Europe going through an experiment of getting nations together to share infrastructure, to share decisional powers, to share regulation has an opportunity to lead the world, but it must embrace innovation, certainly in finance. The banking industry doesn't need things in the margins. It needs things that solve its real problems. And the great thing about startups, the great thing about fintechs is they can very quickly build answers to problems. Think about how we do regulation more than what regulation we need to do. I would really hope that there is progress in the financial sector in terms of more technology. I truly believe that it can help in terms of making it more transparent, make it more simple and also increase competitiveness. Digitisation is here to stay and it's moving at a very high speed. I think the expression that we are not living in an era of change but we are living in a change of era is really understandable now. The sense of global cooperation on fintech, on financial regulation more generally is absolutely crucial. And finally, speed. Speed is of the essence.