 So, we are very happy to have a speaker from Madrid. Could I say that the presentation will be on the record, but for the questions and answers and comments afterwards, we will revert to Europe House rules, that's to say. You may quote what is said, but you may not attribute it to any speaker or indeed to this location. So, Senor Toledo, the future of Europe, a Spanish perspective. Thank you very much, Paddy. Can I speak to the podium? Oh, yeah, sorry. Because people at the podium. Thank you very much. May I call you Paddy? Of course. Thank you very much everyone for coming this afternoon. You call this an afternoon, right? I'm very honored and happy to be in Ireland. Last time I was in Ireland, it was a very, for a very happy occasion because I was invited to a rugby match between Ireland and Wales, and Ireland won. But I was extremely impressed by what I saw, and I intend to come back again. I've been invited again for a match, I think, beginning of next year. And I'm sure I will be here because I love the experience. It was very, very impressive to see all the people there singing Ireland, Ireland. Very, very, very impressed. I come from Brussels, Wales, where we decided on the seats for EMA and EBA yesterday. I'm sorry you lost a draw. But it was very impressive too that you made it to the final against Paris and Frankfurt. So congratulations for that. Although there's no political influence in a draw, I suppose. But I arrived to Brussels almost the following day after it went to, where was it? No, two days later after it came from Göteborg, where we had what we can call the first informal meeting of heads of state and government, or informal summit, or informal European council of the new era of the European Union. And that may serve as a kind of scenario for the future. In fact, it is designed to be a scenario for the future. But before talking about the future, I would like to say something about the very recent past where Ireland and Spain have gone through extremely difficult times. I can say, I think, with certainty, the European Union, the European project has been the best thing that has happened to both Ireland and Spain. And I think we can extend it to every European country, including Germany or Finland, I think some of them, that has nothing to do with their prosperity. In Ireland and Spain, it is crystal clear that our membership of the European Union, at least coincides with probably the best period of stability and prosperity in all our history. Can you find now in Ireland its 44 years, a span of 44 years of more prosperity and stability and peace? In Ireland, in Spain, we know that the last 31 years have been the most prosperous, the most stable in all our history. And when we look at the European Union as a whole, more than six decades now, there is no span of six decades in the history of Europe where there has been more prosperity and more stability and more peace. So does the European Union has anything to do with this? It looks like it does. And when you look at Europe without the European Union, some of the most prosperous countries in the European Union, without the European Union, Britain to start with, or Finland, or Denmark, or Sweden, before they joined the European Union, and after they joined the European Union, one tends to think that this invention has something to do with their prosperity. And that 500 million people buying their goods has something to do with their prosperity. And that establishing economic and commercial links mongers instead of battling each other every 10 or 20 years is a better proposition so that this invention, human invention is a good one. And after we have gone through the worst economic crisis in the European Union, which has put at risk some of the most important European Union political conquests. One of them we share, the Euro, the other one we don't share, Schengen, and that after all the problems, troubles, crisis, we have managed to keep them. We have managed to buttress them. And now we're starting to reform them in order for them to last longer and to resist future crises. You tend to think that there is a big, large political will again, I mean, supporting them because had it been for the markets in Ireland, in Portugal, in Greece, in Spain, in Cyprus, in other countries, the Euro would not be there. Ireland would not be growing at the pace it is growing now. Spain would not be growing at the pace it is now because we would have lost the Euro, we would have lost access to the markets for many, many years. Had not it been because the political will, Schengen will not be there anymore. And it is a fractured Schengen yet that we will go back to this very important objective that having a European Union without physical frontiers, which is one of the main issues in Ireland right now, not with the rest of the European Union, but with the rest of the Ireland. So we've gone through the worst economic crisis in the history of the European integration. We've gone to the worst refugee and immigration crisis since World War II. We've gone to an existential crisis called Brexit. We've gone to the worst period in international terrorism, and we in Ireland and in Spain know a lot about terrorism. And then the election of, let's say, someone the other side of the Atlantic who didn't particularly believe in European integration. And we're still there. And after 10 years of buttressing, of avoiding collapse, and because there was a political will behind it, we're still there. And for the first time, and what we had in Götterberg three days ago is the first proof, we are starting to think and to talk and we will start, we will have to wait until new elections in Germany, probably. We will start to decide to build. So we will start to, I've been through this since 2012 when I arrived from Senegal where I was ambassador and I went to the Prime Minister's office. We've been spending all our energies and our time in trying to avoid collapse. For the first time, all the economies in Europe, particularly Ireland and Spain, we are only second to Ireland in growth this year, I think, are growing. For the first time, we will probably grow more than the United States. For the first time, all the countries in the Eurozone will grow. So things are not looking bright because we lost millions of jobs and we have to get them back. And especially we have got to get quality jobs, especially in Spain. But when you compare a situation where in Spain we lost three and a half million jobs in three years with a situation in which we are creating, we, I mean, there's been job creation at the base of a half a million a year in Spain, well, and it's a healthy growth. It's a growth, we're not getting to your, I would say, unsustainable current account surplus in Ireland. I don't know how you manage that, but we have a current account surplus in Spain, which we have to compare with an 11% GNP current account sustained, more than 10% deficit in our current account for many years. And now we are in surplus. So we are growing healthily. So this gives us the opportunity once we have an established government in Germany to start creating things, to start sending positive messages to our citizens. Because we've been spending, we have spent almost 10 years sending messages about austerity, about discipline, about cuts. All these messages were coming from Brussels. In times where, as always, being the case in Europe and in the world, but especially in Europe, when you go through a very difficult economic crisis, populism emerges and proposes simplistic answers to very complex questions. I'm not saying that they do not make the right questions, but they always propose the wrong answers. So I'm very confident that this time, contrary to what happened in the 20s and the 30s, populism may miss the train because they need a real crisis. And now that we are growing, now that people are starting to feel the reign of prosperity again, they will miss the train and we go back to normality. And normality in Europe means democracy, rule of law, parliamentary democracy, less referendums, means compromise, means prosperity, and must mean, and this is very important, to protect, defend, support, and improve one of the best qualities we have in Europe, which is we are the only region in the world where there is a public pension system, where there is a public health system, where there is a public education system, no other region in the world. Everybody, that's not a billionaire, would like to live in Europe in the world, and that's why that's because we have a system in which one of the fundamental values is to have a welfare state, or at least a state who cares for the well-being of the citizens, and is prepared to pay for it. This is extremely important. The challenge, and I now get into the future, the big challenge for Europe is to combine a system that supports, defends, and even improves this system while being competitive in a world, like with China, another, not emerging but emerged powers, competing with regions and countries in the world, powers in the world, which don't have these costs. And this is not impossible. A country like Germany, which has this system very well installed in its roots, is one of the most competitive countries in the world, Ireland. We need to combine a tax system that pays for this welfare state, at the same time being competitive enough, not taxing our companies, so that they are not, or to prevent that, that they are not competitive in the world. So this is the real challenge of the future. And for countries who are in the Euro, like Ireland and Spain, well, there is always some good in crisis. What we have learned of the Euro crisis, we have started to reform in the middle of the crisis. Now we have the opportunity to really go deep into what we have learned was wrong in the design. And what was wrong? That we had no banking union, and that was particularly important in Ireland. And in Spain, we need a banking union. We need to make that a deposit in Germany is as safe as a deposit in Ireland, in Spain, or in Portugal. And for that, we need three things. We have almost two, which is a common supervisory system, a common resolution system, and a common deposit insurance scheme. It will come. It is difficult, but it will come. As long as we convince our Germans and other friends that we have a good supervisory system and that we all apply the same rules, it will come. This is one part, but we also found out that we cannot go on with extremely different fiscal policies in the European Union. That we need a system where asymmetric crises are balanced by, yes, transfers. We need some kind of union of transfers. Not only in the form of regional funds, which are important, but also in the form of a common European budget that could apply to countries that have asymmetric crises, because we have a common interest rate policy, common monetary policy, which is not matched by a common fiscal and economic policy. So in the end, what we should aim at, and that's our position in Spain, it is not for the next months or even for the next years, it's a minister of finance for the Eurozone with a common budget and with a common debt instrument. You may call it Eurobonds. You say Eurobonds in Germany and they cry for it, but they don't know that we already have them because what is a bond issued by the EMS or even a bond issued by the European Investment Bank. So that's where we're going. The rate, the speed where we get there would be, as always in the European Union, a matter of negotiation. And we need a common immigration policy, countries like Spain that are defending the common external borders, that are preventing people from going to Sweden from the Spanish coasts have to be recognized in the common budget and we have to defend them with common means, for instance. So this is the kind of Europe we need. So this is the kind of Europe where we're going. The good news is that the crisis, I wouldn't say is over, but when I compare the situation in Spain and in Ireland when I arrived from Senegal at the end of 2011 and now I see a different picture, I see more possibilities. The bad news is that we won't do things in the next months. The bad news is that we need elections in Germany again, I suppose, but what is three months in the history of the European Union? In the meantime we're growing, in the meantime we're stronger, and in the meantime countries like Ireland and Spain are showing the path of reform to many others. Thank you very much.