 A decade ago, the World Bank published a book called Golden Growth, restoring the luster of the European growth model. And the authors very lucidly documented how the European growth model has been a powerful engine for convergence, helping the developing countries in Europe to become high-income countries. In fact, of the countries that are members now, only one, my country, Bulgaria, is not a high-income country, and it will be probably next year. For all countries that have become members of the EU, have become high-income countries within five, six, seven years, Portugal took a bit longer. But they pointed out also a decade ago that recent changes at that time, necessary change, and what were these changes that they proposed, they said we need adjustments to trade and finance to make them even work better. These are the parts of the European convergence machine that work best. They're parts of the enterprise and innovation machine that in some countries in Europe have begun to lack and also had to address shortcomings in the functioning of labor markets and governments. And so that convergence machine, this is the term the report pointed out, that convergence machine is all about making the enterprises much more competitive and affording the Europeans the highest standards of living in the world. And now a decade after this was done, where are we? And I'm posing this question because I think when we address the challenges for the countries of CZ, I think there are two crucial background factors. One is where the EU is, because EU is pulling these countries, right? It's driving them towards high-income. And so therefore what is happening in the EU is crucially important. I think the topic of our conference, the geopolitical fragmentation, global inflation, these are by all means very important factors. I think something that trumps this is what is happening in the EU. And so I'm looking at what's happening in the EU. And then in 1990, at the start of transition from command economies to market, the EU accounted for 28% of global GDP, the US for 26. Last year, the European Union has dropped to 17%. And the same as China, which, by the way, in 1990 accounted for just 2% of GDP. When the weights of the European Union and global economy has so dramatically collapsed, I think we have to be worried. Can the EU fulfill its function of a convergence machine for the CZ countries? Yes, these countries do not have many choices. They are right here. The EU is the natural trading partner. This is still the largest trading bloc in the world. It's the lifestyle superpower. Everybody wants to come here. Everybody wants to work here. But we have to think that fixing the EU's convergence machine is something that is absolutely essential. Now I just point one fact that innovation in the EU is working very well in some countries, not very well in others. Two-thirds today, two-thirds of the global patent applications are filed in Asia versus less than 50% a decade ago. For the EU, the number of these global applications was 30% a decade ago, now it's 10% versus 20% for the US. So we have substantial challenges here. And I think, obviously, everybody is worried about where the EU is going. I think it's so super important. Another factor is when we look at the growth rates of the EU over the last decade, compared to the decade before, and the decade before the first decade of this new century, when we actually had the most dramatic convergence of the countries of CZ to EU level, we had really a very buoyant global economy growth rate in the EU, 2.2% the first decade of the century, 1.6% the next decade. Obviously when the EU is growing much more slowly, its share in global GDP will decline. Its pull for trade, for people, for invention is dimension. So now let me turn to the countries of the CZ, obviously there was a very strong expansion as I just referred to, the decade before the global financial crisis, supported by very robust reforms, EU integration, but economic expansion pretty much in line with what happened in the EU declined after the decades of the global financial crisis. So you look at the EU members among the CZ, so I'm going to use the term EU members of those that are within the CZ, not in general, EU members, growth slowed from 5% to 3% for the candidates, slowed from almost 6% to 3%, so very dramatic slowdown. And so as a result of COVID, when I look at consensus estimates, the consensus estimates for both sets of countries over the next decade or at least through 2030 are 3%. So when we think of the candidate countries of the CZ, it is very hard to imagine a successful accession with 3% growth rates. When you're growing at 3%, it is very difficult to do the things that you could do when you're growing at 6%. And so therefore strengthening the growth potential of these countries, strengthening the inclusive green and more sustainable growth, I think that should be the prime concern and that should be the prime opportunity and the prime policy prescription. I mean, this morning we heard a lot of the countries are pursuing ambitious reforms. They are negotiating to join the EU, but something has to change in the structure of reforms that they push to expand really that productive capacity of the economy. I mean, let me just point to several things. One is in the decade before the COVID pandemic, the contribution of total factor productivity to growth in both members among the CZ and the candidates was substantial. Sorry, slow substantial, right? Slow substantially from the previous decade, from the first decade of this century. But while among the EU members, it's slow to about 0.6% percentage points contribution a year from more than one. Among the candidates, it was actually a negative contribution. When you have a negative contribution from total factor productivity, with all the concerns about whether the growth decomposition reflects the true factors, whether we are measuring things correctly, very true. But when you have a negative contribution from total factor productivity, it's very hard to imagine, again, strong growth potential, strong growth, and a successful accession. What are the reasons behind this? I'm going to talk about investments, human capital, and then I'm going to refer very briefly to demographic and other issues. You know, the fixed investment relative to GDP among the accession countries increased about 25% over the last decade. But 25% while if it was maintained for three, four decades, you could say this is a very decent investment rate. This investment rate is not adequate, especially with lagging productivity. It's not adequate to replace aging capital stocks. And especially now when we're faced with a green transition, the need to spend two, three, four, some countries even five, seven percent of GDP in my country, seven percent of GDP a year to ensure transition to net zero by 2050 or 2060. And so one, these countries are not investing enough. Why are they not investing enough? Well, it's not surely only the government. It's the business environment, it's the private sector, the availability of FDI and so forth. Second is the human capital. You know, among the countries that are in this region, CZ, some of them are the education champions of the world. Poland is the sixth best country in the world according to OCD's PISA. Estonian is number one among the OCD countries. But while we have these education champions, we also have countries in which education, even though declared priority, is not actually pulling its weight. For example, we look at functional literacy, you probably know. The PISA test measures literacy, mathematics skills, science skills among 15 year olds, eight graders or so. And those who score two or less on a scale of one to four, two or less are called functionally literate. So in some countries, I'm not going to name them, but as many as 65% of the 15 year olds score two or less than functionally literate. And it's really problematic. Others, as I mentioned, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Czechia, scored much, much, much better than among the top in the world. So we have this huge disparity. And that huge disparity, I think, should be an impetus for education reform. You know, also let me mention the quality of tertiary education. When we look at the disparity between, again, candidate countries and new members, the disparity is wide, but for many, it's about three times as wide, right? Between the top three, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, and the bottom three, three times as large quality of tertiary education. How do we expect with such quality of tertiary education to have the qualified engineers potentially later inventors to pull forward these economies? A large share of the population of the youth are neither what is called NEET, neither in education, nor in employment, nor in training. 20% on aggregates, on average, in the candidate countries, 12 in the members, some countries, much, much, much worse. So let me leave it here that without appropriate high level of human capital, it's gonna be very hard to maintain good growth rates. So another area of structural reforms. Institutional quality, right? I mean, transition or accession, if you will, or I'm gonna talk a little bit later, very briefly about going to high income, right? Most of these countries, some middle income countries, they have to cross what we call the middle income trap, this development trap, institutional trap that prevents them to become high income countries. This is what the transition to high income is, right? They have to overcome institutional barriers. So when you look at regulatory quality, obviously with accession to the EU, whether it's formal negotiations, whether it's alignment behind the scenes, regulatory quality has improved. But for the candidate countries, while it is three, two-thirds, so two-thirds of the countries in the world have regulatory quality that is worse than them, which is a fantastic achievement, there is still a big gap with the EU members. So therefore, I think for enterprises to thrive, they really have to push to create these institutions, enable markets or create markets when they don't exist, create a level playing field for all enterprises and support contestability among all the echelons, whether it's on the enterprise side, political side, social side, and so forth. I was gonna talk about corruption, but I'm gonna take a long time, so I'm not gonna do that. So let me come to a conclusion with two points. One is the convergence. So GDP per capita, in purchasing power parity, for the member states has risen from less than 50% to 80% in 30 years, dramatic improvement. A large part of that convergence happened before the global financial crisis, a large part of that substantial part happened before the global financial crisis, but okay, that's what happens when you have lower level of income, you converge faster. For the candidates, that convergence was from about 25 to about 40. Still convergence, but much lower, keeping the ratios between the candidates and the EU member states constant. So one could say the candidate countries are converging to the levels in the EU, they're not converging to the levels of the EU member states in this region. Finally, final thoughts. Since 1990, 33 years ago, for the last three decades, 25 countries in the world have become high income countries. 13 of them are in the EU. Two others are Korea and Uruguay. Everybody else was either oil dependent, commodity dependent, or tourism dependent. And so therefore, growing to high income is not very easy, involves a minor miracle. The EU is that provision, if you will, of these miracles, and I hope the countries of CZ, the applicant, the candidate countries for EU accession, will take advantage of their proximity to a region to become both high income and to have a very successful accession. A lot of that depends on the EU. A much more dynamic, faster growing European Union that can pull both talents, exports, and innovation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ifilo, for what I think is a very stimulating vision. And maybe also a positive note, at least a way forward, if you get it all right. Thank you very much. Anita, the floor is yours, and you've noticed that I've been a little bit liberal with eight minutes, but there are some limits to my liberalism. So I'm just, thank you. I think there's a point to it, but I don't know where. Oh, I see. Did you have it there? I'll take it. So, okay. Floor is yours. Thank you very much. First of all, many thanks for the invitation to be part of the European Central Bank Conference. In my intervention, I will focus on implications of the changing geopolitical landscape for the income convergence of the Western Balkan economies. A recent study on 68 global risk, global events risk since 1962 points that geopolitical events typically have had a short-lived impact on markets and economies. However, it seems that this time is different. Practically, if we look across many different surveys, one of the most important identified global risk both in the medium and long-term is geopolitical fragmentation. I think it does not come as a surprise given that the latest crisis have a present one of the biggest stress tests to the globalization, which has been a long-standing process, beneficial process, which through trade, financial, and technological integration has significantly boosted the global income. For example, according to some estimates, 10% in one decade, especially the income of smaller economies, acting as an engine of income convergence, including the Western Balkan region. Okay. Thus, clearly through the charts here, we can see that trade and financial integration significantly increased in the last two decades. Trade integration was increasing across all economies, reaching on average 100% of GDP. Most of it, not most of it, but to be more correct, significant part of it being through involvement in the global value chains. Trade integration was coupled with financial integration in the region, which doubled in the last two decades, reaching about 200%. Of course, I'm looking at through the international investment position, about 200%. Still significantly lagging behind EU. We are not comparing with the openness of the European economy, but still significant progress. What is also important is that significant part of it was through FDIs in the tradeable sector, which meant only not access to external source of finance, which was more than needed, giving the relatively low domestic savings rate, but it also meant access to technology, knowledge, and how. Both trade and financial integration practically acted as a catalyst for growth and income convergence, which clearly from the chart, we can see that almost doubled in the last two decades, but still remaining significantly low, about 40% of the average EU income level. However, if we look dynamically, what we can observe is that the pace of convergence significantly decelerated after the global financial crisis. Practically, about half of the total convergence in the last two decades took place in only five-year period preceding the global financial crisis, as since then, it started significantly decelerating. Why we have observed this deceleration? Practically, the deceleration to a significant part can be attributed to the structural issues as the potential growth in the region has broadly halved, from about 5% to about 2.5% in the Western Balkan region. In comparison with the EU, this deceleration has been even stronger. What does it mean? It means that looking forward, the convergence may be even more challenging. Why we are observing the deceleration or why the potential growth has halved? Practically, there are structural hurdles remaining along all the three long-term growth, determinants, physical capital, human capital, and particularly productivity gap. Just let me quickly reflect on each of them. Productivity, catching up process definitely sluggish and productivity gap remains significantly wide. Currently, the productivity on average in the region is about half of the EU productivity, which clearly points to a need of policies focused more on innovation, technology, more efficient use of resources, but also lifting up the quality of institutions as according to some surveys, average rank of the Western Balkan region is 80 out of 140 countries, in comparison with 20 EU average, clearly huge institutional quality gap. Concerning the physical capitals, a physical capital accumulation has significantly decelerated and one of the reasons being, one of the key reasons is that investments following the global financial crisis has plunged across almost all region. They have been not adequate to narrow the capital stock, which remains wide and this refers equally to private and public capital stock. So gaps in both two segments remain. If you look the chart, seems that the Macedonia is outlier, not Macedonia is outlier, because investments following the global financial crisis accelerated and they are hovering around 30%. But capital gap remains. What does it mean? It means that it's not about the quantity and the size of investments. It's also about the quality and efficiency of the investments. Concerning the truth factor, human capital, we are observing significant challenges in this segment, as I already mentioned in the previous panel. Working age population has been declining from about 70% share in total population in the last decade to about 65% and according to some estimates, it's set to further decline because of two reasons as already mentioned, adverse demographic and immigration. If we take into account that according to some estimates, one third of immigration is a highly skilled labor force. It implies that immigration is not challenged only for the quantity. It is definitely a huge challenge for the quality, which comes on top of all the challenges which the colleagues already mentioned was currently the quality of the population, especially in the Western Balkan region. So huge emphasis needed to policies that will mitigate the effects of migration, focus on policies to make the maximum, to maximize the benefits from emigration through I mentioned remittances, investments from diaspora, strengthening the ties with the diaspora, but also policies to increase the use of the potential that we have, but it's not used. This particularly refers to low participation rate, especially of women and young people and skills mismatches, which are gains boiled down to education and quality of the labor force. Thus, it seems that the serious catching are processes ahead of us, even without factoring or embedding the geoeconomic fragmentation risk. Just one exercise that we did in the central bank at the historical relative growth speed, it will take Macedonian economy to about 40 years to converge to average EU income level. Geoeconomic fragmentation creates, of course, additional challenges as cost of the globalized world can be severe in work through a number of channels. Some estimates point of permanent loss of global GDP to about three, four percentage points depending on the assumptions if trade fragmentation is coupled with technological fragmentation and financial fragmentation even more than 10% of GDP. And what is very important from our angle is that according to some estimates, the effects might be disproportionately higher for smaller and open economies that are more dependent by their nature on external trade and finance and plus have bigger knowledge and technology gaps. The estimated, we try to estimate the impact on the Macedonian economy from geopolitical defragmentation practically effect seems non-negligible ranging in being in the range of about three to 8% loss in the GDP in the medium term. Of course, the impact, eventual impact will depend on the policy efforts to cope with the risk but also to use the opportunities some of them were already mentioned such as near-shoring given the geographical but also cultural proximity of Western Balkan to the European markets as well as the fact that despite the increase of the unit labor cost still we are one of the cheapest labor force in the Europe. Especially in the context where we are seeing revisiting of importance given to economic efficiency vis-a-vis security and operational resilience of the economies. Overall, if we look the UNTAT Productive Capacities Index which is multi-dimensional index we see that the Western Balkan economy significantly lack behind EU especially in the quality of infrastructure segment and given the high correlation coefficient with the GDP per capita it seems that we as the countries must focus on increasing the potential and harnessing our still untapped potential in response to changing geopolitical environment but not just for the geopolitical but in general to deal with the structural hurdles which are hampering our faster convergence. To conclude, income convergence in the Western Balkan region has been one of the, I guess, been of the fast track even before the recent crisis that we faced. The recent crisis just even more emphasized further old structural hurdles that still remain unaddressed as we could see and brought to the fore new ones on reinforce some of them such as fragmentation, climatries, digitalization and so on. To avoid the risk of further slow convergence or even divergence dealing with structural issues is a priority. Past experience shows that faster EU accession process can play a catalytic role in this regard. Structural transformation of our economies requires stable and sustainable sources of finance which definitely is a challenge given the elevated debt levels in the region. No access to different concessional EU tools you were mentioning on the previous panel next generation font and so on whose purpose is among other things to deal with the structural transformation and domestic savings that are below not just investment needs but also below some historical investment rates for fast convergence past episodes. That's pointing to a need of alternative external finance tightening of financial conditions. We are witnessing the most synchronized and most aggressive tightening in the last five decades as central banks must remain focused on price as well as financial stability as a precondition of sustainable medium term growth. Thus in this context support of IFIs and European institution in lifting the growth potential and putting the convergence again on a fast track is of a key importance. Thank you. Thank you very much Anita. Very interesting. And let me now go to the boards. Eight minutes. Thank you Frank. I have only five slides so I'll I hope to stick to eight minutes and much of what I'm supposed to say has already been said so I'll try to be relatively brief maybe not very optimistic though. So what I intend to say is that and this has been said that the convergence story was very successful one. As we know the convergence was rapid. It started with a switch to the new market economy reallocation of the resources which in itself created the opportunity to increase the productivity immensely in the beginning then the countries got integrated into the world trade. And as you can see that has contributed certainly a lot to the convergence as the market shares have increased over time for example since 2000 you can see here. However after the GFC you see the slow down in that factor two thirds have actually happened in the eight years prior to the GFC and only one third of this increase in the world market share has happened after the GFC in the next 16 years. So it is slowing down. And you can see it's also in terms of the potential GDP growth which was high prior to the GFC based on lots of capital influence in the central Europe which were coming onto a relatively well-educated labor force. But then the GFC came there was a stop in the capital inflows and then gradually potential rate of growth of GDP as we changed the business model basically after the GFC has been increasing up until recently when it started to decrease. So it seems that these kind of first factors of the converges have been exhausted to a large extent and what we see now is actually converges of the potential rate of growth towards the eurozone which is not what we want to see. Because once it converges there will be no more converges. So we have to be careful and think of what can we do next. If you look at the gains from external trade and FDI influence, FDIs of course played a major role particularly after the EU enlargement 2004 to 2009. But then after that they kind of settled at the levels which do not create anymore the major contribution to the convergence. If you think about the geopolitics and that there has been basically the conference was open with the notion that oh maybe these geopolitics friends create opportunities for countries in central Europe, for the EU or candidate countries. I'm worried about that. I think actually that they will help no one and probably least maybe ourselves here in the room, the central European and candidate, the EU and candidate countries. Why? Because what we see and this is what we started to discuss at lunch when I had to leave for more important discussion but it was like you have basically trade frictions that have been recently introduced by the IRA in the US, basically subsidies war and domestic content basically trade barriers that have been created and you see now that the China responding and Europe responding. We're getting into a situation where as an economist we should see that as a suboptimal world. We do know that in a trade theory the best possible is to have a free trade then if somebody introduces some kind of barriers, imperfections then actually introducing another imperfection could be well for improving but then if everybody starts to add imperfections in the end we all lose and the productivity growth goes down. Countries try to subsidize and create companies on their own soil. They try to take them away from foreign countries into their own boundaries but that in the end usually ends up with consumers paying too much for the products and the taxpayers paying too much as well productivity going down and then if it's a subsidies war that does not play usually well for the poorer countries and in this room most of the countries are poorer not Frank's but other central European countries because they cannot compete in subsidies. So everybody be very careful how much these geopolitical change creates opportunities for us versus how much it might harm us. Particularly if you think of like now if you can if you think of the geopolitics in a sense that you'll have the same kind of situation with China that you have with Russia. Well yeah then you can see maybe the opportunity for central Europe to replace in some areas China but if it's like semiconductors high end electronic goods very difficult to see that because it's gonna be lured by the subsidies not in the central in Europe but elsewhere in the Western Europe at the cost of losing the priority long term time but not necessarily helping us to be more successful. So let's see how it will play out but I'm more skeptical about how much we can do. For example here you can see like if you look at the export market shares you see the candidate and the other countries slowing down but then candidate and potential candidate countries speeding up in the next couple of years but it's what Boiata has shown. This is Turkey, Turkey is the candidate. So the increase in the, this is like Turkey getting into the space that has been created with the sanctions to Russia but this only can work for us if you have, I think this is the scenario that I can think of you have but then it would be so bad for the whole world that it would not help us either if you have something like that with China. One thing that was less mentioned today was the importance of the EU funds and certainly EU funds also had a positive contribution to the convergence. Still the central in Europe use much more funds on average than all member states than the average of the EU and with the RF in a way this period of the usage of the EU funds has been prolonged. For example in Croatia's case and we were the last country that joined the European Union the typical pattern of the usage of the EU funds is the first seven year perspective it goes up then it picks and then comes down but with the next generation actually that has been prolonged so that's good and if it's smartly used that has been said that could contribute to the increase of the potential rate of growth of GDP and particularly if it's used in advancing the digitalization of the economies. I would say as I will say in the end but the relative importance going forward will come down also, it will come down. If you look at the TFP growth again you see a decline and relatively rapid decline in the TFP growth over time which also does not bode well for the future converges and the demographic trends also are not looking very well but that has been already said so I'm not gonna repeat that. So basically these drivers of growth in the past are kind of expiring and we have to find new ones so which are the new ones, structural reforms and that has also been said but one thing if you look at for example is that these governance things the political stability, rule of law and government efficiencies that's where there's still a lot to be done. Deborah has said that one of the barriers to investment in the region is uncertainty and uncertainty is connected with that with the rule of law with the governance political stability that should be improved is different across different countries. I mean for example we have Poland and Croatia which have been growing very fast recently but you see that rule of law or political stability in the other country are not still up to the EU standard so much can be done there and also the education, the labor force and I agree with whoever said I think it was also better that it's not only the formal education it's not the secondary or high level education but it's actually keeping the education through the lifetimes of the workers which is where the central East Europe is lagging substantially behind the old Europe and we have to do much more in terms of particularly because the world and the technologies are changing so much this becomes more and more important and that's where we're not doing very well and of course the R&D technology digitalization this is where we have a chance now to use the particular IRA funds to improve and to basically create a basis for productivity growth which will be of a different kind than it used to be in the past when the low hanging fruits were harvested now it's a higher hanging fruit, structural reforms which depend so much on the politics in each and every country so in the end what I would like to say is convergence is still there it will stay there for some time but it's more challenging it's slower and the persistence and the speed of the convergence will probably more country specific as we go forward in terms of how much each and every country does on picking this higher hanging fruit available still, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much Boris then we go to the last speaker of this panel at least in this round, Jen Seiko and if you keep to the eight minutes in translating them to ten then we still have an hour like all the others have done and we still have five slides as well for a lively questions in answer please, the first years Thank you very much I will try to be in time so basically many topics were already covered I will go throughout my presentation but however will be similar to the same conclusion especially for our region so countries of the CZ has been going 30 years transformation process so basically globalization and de-integration has been going parallel and to end so many countries have been accelerating the convergence and de-integration during this transition so this changing geopolitical landscape can have a negative effect on economic convergence can complicate the process of green transition can lead to the difficulties in the energy dependence and then can affect the capital flows across the borders then the refugee situation now after the war in Ukraine complicates more the situation with the demographic movements and other negative effects I will go through globalization and the trade densification for the CZ and then talking about the fragmentation geopolitical landscape there are some positive implications and then at the end I will close with the country case and the central bank role in this story so basically the globalization and the trade intensification we can see here the global trade flows to GDP since the 80s to 2020 and this is also shown the FDIs per capita the world compared to the CZ so with increased globalization of trade capital and labor markets have led to a range of positive spillovers higher FDIs have increased productivity employment and wages in the developing countries global production have trade and trade have kept consumer prices low across developed countries CZ region is a major success story as we mentioned in the 1992 average FDIs flows in CZ countries were about $10 per capita while nowadays the average FDIs flows stands at the level of $370 per capita so higher FDIs will lose increased trade and transfer of know-how and have facilitated growth and economic convergence for the CZ country regions so the combined result is higher productivity lower price and higher output for these countries so a fragment a fragmenting geopolitical landscape definitely there are some negative effects the geopolitical landscape is changing rapidly after the following wars of after the war aggression of Russia and Ukraine this would lead to a fragmentation of the world ordering to politically affiliated blocks we all could see how the world is changing the Russia is after the war is shifting its orientation versus China and Asia while European countries are having another attitude if this fragmentation is permanent an overall negative impact on new economic activity is to be expected over the long term European Union is reaching capital but has a demographic deficit a shrinking population and is poor in natural resources energy imports remains at 55% of total EU consumption needs over the past two decades so this situation makes the energy independence over either difficult or quite closely for the EU countries so negative demographic trends growing energy and security costs and de-globalization will lead to fiscal and financial strains the long-term cost of economic fragmentation will negatively affect the known EU CZ countries as well due to the close geographical proximity to EU to intense trade and financial flows and potential and social ties so let's go through the positive implications some potential upsides for the countries in Central Eastern and South Eastern European region are present over the short to medium term CZ region is well placed to experience increased FDIs due to increased EU investors interests due to a natural option to relocate production close by due to a familiar environment for the EU investors and due to an increasing level of sophistication in addition to improvements in the rule of law and business environment the changing of geopolitical environment has meant a stronger political commitment by the EU towards a full integration of CZ region the result is a renewed push we all have seen on the EU enlargement process and new integration for the candidate and potential candidate countries we can go through the process of integration of EU integration the candidates tied to status was granted to Moldova for example Ukraine and Georgia in June 2022 Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted candidate status in December 2022 EU visa liberalization process for Kosovo was already approved recently and Albania and North Macedonia has formally opened negotiation chapters with while Montenegro and Serbia are already in the negotiation process so the EU integration process leads to positive spillovers in the growing financial support reduction in reduction in the perceived risk across the private sector and an acceleration of structural reforms so finally in the final slide I will take Albania as a case but I believe is very similar with all the behaviors and the reforms of the countries in the region so the EU integration process for Albania is the ultimate long-term strategy goal it is also a driver for structural reforms for aligning policies and regulations with those of you for upgrading domestic institutions and improving business and investment climate and in this context as a central bank Bank of Albania has also a crucial role in the process so we should not forget first we should remain committed to our mandate priority mandate of the price stability also in this changing environment and challenging environment price stability is our priority objective priority objective as a central bank but however this is a precondition for the financial stability because price stability and financial stability are very much connected to each other in our economies second we should align our policies regulations and practices with those of the European Central Bank and European systems of central banks third we should accelerate our efforts towards developing our financial and payment systems seeking to carefully integrate those with the EU ones in the process of digitalization and modernization of payment systems as a central bank we do have objective in addition to price stability and financial stability also modernization of payment systems and the process of integration of payment system in terms of modernization of payments it's a very challenging one that we as a central banks are working for on the other side European Central Bank should seek to assist us wherever possible if it's possible any time we are always having a look our eyes are on the European Central Bank so thank you very much