 Mesdames et messieurs, chers amis, chers Augustin, je suis heureuse de m'adresser à vous sur l'évolution du rôle de la finance à l'épreuve de la pandémie. Je vais continuer en anglais parce que je crois qu'un certain nombre d'entre vous ne parle pas le français et on m'a donc demandé de m'exprimer en anglais, ce qui n'est pas vraiment trop compliqué pour moi. Over the past decade, the global community has been rethinking the role of finance in society. The excesses culminating into the global financial crisis have challenged the notion of financial markets and banks serving as a seamless intermediary between savers and investors. Tighter regulation and supervision have succeeded in making our financial system safer and more resilient. It has helped turn the financial sector into a source of growth rather than instability. Comme disait l'un d'entre vous, pour une fois les banques ne sont pas à l'origine des problèmes. Indeed, as the pandemic broke out in Europe, banks acted as a crucial backstop to our economy thanks to both the historically high capital buffers and, of course, our emergency monetary policy measures too. Liquidity strapped firms were able to draw quickly on their credit lines protecting millions of jobs. Between March and May, euro area banks extended credit to firms in the amount of 245 billion euros i.e. 2% of euro area GDP. But the path of recovery from the current crisis remains long and uncertain. Countries across the globe, including in the euro area, are seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 infections. In the current environment, the demands on finance will be multifaceted. The pandemic will test the adaptability and flexibility of our financial system. It will accelerate structural trends towards digitalisation and a carbon neutral economy reshaping our societies in fundamental ways. Already before the pandemic, the financial sector landscape in the euro area had changed significantly. Aujourd'hui, non-banks accountent for around half of firms' external financing, which is up from 30% about 10 years ago. New technologies emerge that can change how financial and payment services are offered. Now, while these trends create challenges, they also present great opportunities. They have the potential to quicken the pace of recovery, spur productivity and advance society's economic well-being. According to most recent research, prospective borrowers having access to a broad and diversified funding universe brings significant advantages, particularly in the context of greening and digital development. If properly administered, a diverse financial system has the capacity to distribute risk more evenly, foster economic resilience and allocate funds more effectively. And in that respect, I see three main pillars in the euro area's financial landscape. Let's look at them. The first pillar is a strong banking sector. Despite all the challenges they face, banks are and will remain a critical source of finance and a partner for entrepreneurs, in particular small and medium-sized companies, which are the backbone of our economy. But the low interest rate environment and rapid technological change are testing banks' ability to adapt to changes in the way customers demand financial products now. Compared with other advanced economies, the euro area banking sector is still hampered by a relatively low cost efficiency, with an average cost to income ratio of 67%, which is 10 percentage points higher than that of Nordic or the US banks. Further digitalisation and consolidation, both domestically and across borders, will strengthen the banking sector, reduce excess capacity and foster a common banking market within the euro area, with the scale that goes with it. That's my first pillar. My second pillar is a liquid and deep capital market. And here is where Europe has a lot of potential. Today, there is still no single market for finance in the euro area. Progress in cross-border financial integration has been too slow. And market capitalisation as a percentage of GDP accounts for less than 55%, compared with almost 150% in the US and more than 120% in Japan. An undersized and fragmented capital market, coupled with underdeveloped cross-border banking, means that finance in the euro area offers less than optimal risk-sharing opportunities. In the United States, for instance, around 50% of a shock to a state's GDP is cushioned by capital and financial markets. Whereas in the euro area, that cushion is about 20%. And without enhanced private risk-sharing, exogenous shocks will continue to drive a wedge between financial conditions in different euro area economies, causing persistent dispersion in economic outcomes and undermining real convergence. As you know, Europe has become a world leader in the issuance of green bonds. In 2019, around half of global issuance was concentrated in the EU. To keep that edge over the competition, deeper and more integrated capital markets are needed to accelerate the transition towards a digital and green economy. Another good reason. The UK's departure from the EU's single market has underlined the urgency for us to work towards a true capital market union. Pulling resources sufficiently is even more important in a more decentralized financial system. Pour toutes ces raisons, j'ai vraiment demandé aux législataires européens de faire un progrès sur le nouveau plan d'action du capital, qui a été proposé par la Commission l'année dernière. C'est parti à mon troisième et dernier piler. Il s'agit de l'infrastructure financière et moderne. Dans l'ambulance d'une seule zone européenne, c'est-à-dire CIPPA, les paiements peuvent être procédés à l'extérieur à la même saison et à l'effet des paiements nationaux. Le système européen de paiement instantiel, aussi appelé TIPPS, permet aux services de paiement de paiement à transmettre des fonds en réel temps à chaque jour de l'année. Mais dans un seul marché de 1,5 billon de consommateurs, nous avons aussi besoin d'une solution européenne pour le point de sale et des paiements de paiement online. N'est-ce pas que 10 pays européens n'ont toujours pas accepté des paiements de paiement domestiques d'autres membres de l'Union européenne ? La nouvelle initiative de paiement de paiement européenne, launchée par 16 banks européens, certains d'eux, je suis sûrs, dans le monde, peuvent ressentir cette voie et renforcer l'autonomie européenne et l'environnement dans lequel les policies protectionnistes, comme les sanctions, et même l'exclusion des systèmes de paiement, ont notamment augmenté dans les dernières années, comme beaucoup de gens de l'Union européenne ont pu participer à ce projet. Alors, qu'est-ce que l'ECB a fait dans tout ça ? Bien, nous ne sommes pas par la sideline dans ce processus. Tout d'abord, nous devons assurer que la paiement européenne et le système qui soutient nos paiements continuent à moderniser et à approfondir les changements économiques et aussi la façon dont les gens utilisent ces paiements. A l'ECB, c'est notre duty d'assurer que les gens ont accès à une paiement d'accès risquable, à un niveau de paiement low-cost, ainsi qu'à un état des services de paiement d'art qui reflèrent notre changement d'économie. Et nous devons assurer que les paiements européens soient adaptés pour une économie digitale globale afin que, en face du changement de risques, nous puissions préserver l'autonomie européenne des paiements européens. L'introduction potentielle d'une euro digitale comme un complément à la paiement, pas d'une substitute, pourrait also allow a public source of outside money to remain at the core of European Paiement Systems. But it could also potentially challenge the role of banks in our financial ecosystem and potentially crowd out private payment solutions. So, we are carefully exploring the benefits, risks and operational challenges of introducing a digital currency. But this is high on the agenda. The second consideration is that financial structures matter profoundly for the transmission of monetary policy affecting both its effectiveness and its channels. And it is for that reason that one work stream of our monetary policy strategy review, which has now resumed, focuses on assessing the role of the non-bank sector for the conduct of monetary policy. The pandemic has demonstrated that we can flexibly design and calibrate and implement our policies to reflect the financial structure we operate in. In practice, this has meant securing policy transmission through both banks and capital markets. Our Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme, PEP, has worked through both channels to address the harmful tightening in financial conditions that the pandemic initially triggered. By easing sovereign financial conditions, asset purchases have had a broad and important stabilising effect on the economy as a whole. And that is because sovereign bond yields serve as a benchmark for the pricing of most other assets in financial markets, including bank loans and corporate bonds. Purchases of private sector assets have also benefited corporate bonds and commercial paper critically supporting firms in dealing with the fallout from the crisis. Issues by the non-financial firms in the year to date is at historically high levels. And our latest series of targeted longer term refinancing operations, TLTRO Season 3 have targeted the bank lending channel more directly safeguarding credit supply beyond the lifeline that banks granted to firms and households in the early days of the crisis. By offering funding at rates low as minus 1%, these operations provide strong monetary incentives for banks to maintain their lending to the real economy throughout the crisis. The large absorption of funds in the June and September operations shows that banks are responding to the incentives. Overall, ECB research finds that the funding cost relief provided by our measures coupled with the capital relief provided by European Banking Supervision will increase loans to firms by more than 5% over the period 2020 to 2022. The same research argues that in the absence of these policies one million more workers would have lost their jobs. So, in conclusion, the measures that we have taken season the beginning of this devastating crisis have contributed measurably to easing financial conditions and restoring and preserving the shock absorption capacity of our entire financial system. Together with the decisive measures taken by euro area governments they have created the conditions for banks and capital markets to support and nourish the economic recovery. Now it's time for all of us, the policymakers, the regulators, the legislators, the investors at the national level and at the European level to continue building on these achievements. We need to promote and embed a financial architecture that is fit for the challenges of tomorrow and that helps accelerate the transition towards a more digital and more green euro area economy. It is a challenge. It would be easy to revert back to our turf, to our behind our borders and to assume that life will continue as it was. We cannot let a good crisis go to waste. We have to use it to be stronger the day after. Thank you.