 Crazy is a good word actually, isn't it ladies and gentlemen, a crazy world. If you would have invited me one year ago, you would have probably given me a complete different sketch-up of the story or the question you were raising. You would have asked me something like, will the disaster take place in March or in December? Well, at the end of 2012, we'll be redesigning of the Eurozone, Grexit, or what about all these questions. Now, 2013 at the beginning, you are asking me about the economic adjustment and dividend EU economies. So the question is now not break up of the Eurozone, throwing out any member or redesigning the membership within the Eurozone or Europe, is the question how we can deal with the economic challenge the European states, the Euromember zones and others are facing in these volatile circumstances. This actually shows that we have to see the last 12 months as a sign of success. There was profound uncertainty over Greece, serious concern about Italy and Spain, countless doomsday profitists were predicting the break up of the Eurozone. In 2012, the Eurozone proved its resilience, a year which the Eurogroup, the heads of states and government and the ECB took bold decisions to ensure the unity and the sustainability of the Euros. And one good news at the beginning of 2013 is that politics are regaining the supremacy over markets, which is a good news for politics and probably a good news for the markets as well. And let me let me give you as food for the discussion some statement on the current economic situation, what we have done and some of the pillars which I would see unnecessary that if a new German speaker comes at early 2014 will give another 12 months of success in economic progress. To let it say to be quite clear, the coming months will remain difficult. The Euro area economy remains weak and our citizens continue to feel in Ireland and other program countries but still in Germany and others the impact of the crisis. We are expecting a return to growth, gradually, but the unemployment rates all over Europe are extremely different and in some countries extremely high. The difference is between 4.3% in Austria to unacceptable 26.1% in Spain. Latest economic indicators show a kind of stabilization and a regaining of confidence not only just in the market but in the real economy. However, the easing of tension in debt markets has not led to a sufficient easing of lending condition in vulnerable countries. More over sentiment can easily turn around. So what's the challenge in a globalized world where countries are interconnected which is level within across and across all regions? Actually my simple answer is let do the necessary to lower the yield and for for for to put it more general, stay on course with what we already have been achieving over the last 12 months. My clear message is credibility is key and we have to deliver credible political answers in the different frameworks. For example at the end of this week on the G7 and later on the G20 level credibility must be the guideline for all our policy designs. I can only warn that focusing excessively on the short term issues that can become a risk in itself. In particular fiscal stimulus and interventions on the foreign exchange markets are mostly short lived and can even backfire if confidence is eroded all over again. Short term demand management is no substitute for structural policy measures to improve the economic fundamentals. And actually we as Europeans have very much be aware that the Anglo-Saxon world is point from the other side of the Atlantic is pointing just on us, on Germany, on France, on Greece and others. But not only in Europe we need to make more progress in addressing the necessary fiscal adjustment. I would say that it is urgent that the United States and Japan implementing credible fiscal plans toward balanced budget. Actually New Year's Eve seems to be was a very crazy imagination that my colleagues in the house in Washington DC are trying to limit their debt ceiling but to be quite fair to them they have been successful in postponing the question until May. So the question how fiscal consolidation and how fiscal sustainability can be delivered by the United States not to shock the markets or come to improper reaction have to be given until in the next months. The same applies to and will be debated soon with the new monetary policy from Japan which to European eyes is a contribution for challenge and not a contribution for consolidation. What is our strategy for more growth and employment? Key is that our policies need to be steady, consistent and determined. We have to stay in the course by strengthening our economies, consolidating public financing and reforming our structures for growth, competitiveness and employment. There is no silver bullet. I'm always asked what do you want to do? One issue and I usually have to answer it is not just one single measure that will deliver sustainable progress but at least there are four pillars where we shall work on. Another one is strengthening our economies through structural adjustment. Pillar two is continuing growth friendly fiscal consolidation and ensuring debt sustainability and pillar three is reforming our economies in the direction of enhancing our competitiveness. And pillar four is a path towards completion of the economic and monetary union based on a deeper integration. One of our favorites we call for more Europe which some of my British friends do not like to listen to. What about pillar one? Structural adjustment. The reforms are bearing fruit we have been made in the euro zone. For example, saving rates in the private sector and are going up. The economies have been improvingly performing and the current account deficits in most of the countries have been shrinking. And this is due not only to shrinking domestic demand but also to gains and competitiveness and to recent unit labor cost developments in several countries concerned with point two more rebalancing on the road. The ECB president already pointed in a speech delivered in November that there has been some recent progress in the euro area convergence in terms of relative costs and of internal and external imbalance. Let me illustrate the extent of rebalancing taking place by presenting some results of the alert mechanism report of the ECOMission recently published. EU area and EU rebalancing of current account position is ongoing. This has been the result of the adjustment in the vulnerable countries although development in the member stage with large current account surpluses all also contribute to the rebalancing of the euro area and the European Union. Deficit country have experienced an expansion of exports thanks to gains in competitiveness and a successful re-allocation of capital into export orientated industries. Although these developments include both a cyclical and a structural notion, the structural correction appears to be predominant in most of the countries. Export performances have been improving and this is very surprisingly in the context of a weaker global demand. In your country since 2009 by 15 percent and by 22 percent in volume for Spain and Portugal and 19 percent for Italy and gains in price competitiveness have taken place predominantly in member states with large imbalances sparked by the intense market pressure. Since 2010 the growth rate of nominal unit labor costs in the euro area periphery has been below the corresponding growth rate in the core surplus economy for example like in Germany we are losing competitiveness at the moment. But there's still a lot to do. Structural reforms have already been adopted and announced in other countries. For example France will present its necessary labor market reforms next month in the period the implemented substantial labor market reforms in many countries have to start to translate into significant competitiveness gains in the member states. Although the adjustment is taking place in many area there's a long way to go before durable improvement is achieved. Structural reforms are crucial to boost economic growth, job creation especially in the medium and long term. The battle fields, battle grounds are making labor markets for flexible and dynamic, removing obstacles to competition in the product markets, improving national business environments and reallocating resources to research and development. Providing adequate education and means to self-help especially for young people and modernizing the public administration. It's quite clear that surplus countries and deficit countries are facing different challenges but I would like to stress that Germany is not a contributor to global imbalances. The German current surplus is not the result of an exchange rate policy or subsidized exports. It is the result of an open market-based process and competitive small medium, especially small and medium sized firms in Germany which are strongly integrated in the world economies. German export supports economic growth in the world via technological transfer and productivity increases and the German surplus contributes to a balanced current account of the euro zone in general. Let me talk something about pillar two, growth-friendly consolidation. First of all, a statement to my impression, the myth that deficits can drive growth has gone. More technical spoken, the multiplier of additional deficit spending seems to be negative. We have some empirical analysis that we gained status of depth to GDP at the moment where any additional public spending which is not sustainably financed is not leading to new growth. So it is not the deficit which shall drive growth. It is just the other way around. It is trust in fiscal conditions that are sustainable beyond demand-driven or deficit-driven policies. And if you look on the figures, fiscal consolidation has taken place within the euro zone led by rule-based fiscal policies. With stability to the new established stability and growth park, we are on good track. Yet we have to recall that the public debt in the EU has risen from 60% before the crisis to 90%. So we have a long way to go. But we have to stay on a fiscal conservative track because our problems after the crisis will not raise about coming out of Greece or coming out of any of the program countries. But they will, for example, coming out of the demographic transitions, the aging societies. And new competitors in the markets. And therefore, actually, as a basis for growth, we need adjusted fiscal policies. And unless the fiscal and structural policies are adjusted further, public debt in the EU would remain very high in the coming decade. And I would say this is not acceptable. So we have to stay on course. In the debate, there are voices with advocate a more cautious approach to fiscal consolidation or even a call for expansionary measures. My answer is the same as I pointed out before. Short-term activism and fiscal impulse packages would be counterproductive and do not solve problems but create problems. This is true for countries like my own, which is somehow in a comparatively better position than, for example, Greece. But many countries suffer from over-indebtedness of the public and private sector. And adding depth and delaying adjustment, even only in the short term, will not help us to a better positive development. That does not mean that spending less is the one and only solution. We have to look on the quality of spending, which has not been in the focus of the debate. We have to analyze the composition of the expenditures by prioritizing categories like research and development, educational skills, and then this will lead that the consolidation is much more growth, frankly, than just putting on the break. Pillar number three, reforming our economies in the European Union. Actually, this is something where I would say that the markets have underestimated the political will. And I underestimated the political progress over the last one and a half year as a policymaker. Would anybody in this room have expected the European integration to move as fast as we did over the last one and a half year? Probably only a minority. I will go through, just by naming some of the milestones where we have reformed the institutional frameworks. For example, the SIXPEC, which is implementing an analysis of structural imbalances and competitiveness, which go much beyond the old 60% and 3% analysis we had in those older days. The preventive wing, we call that now, will show his integrated macroanalytical chances probably within the next year. The fiscal compact, which is a type of debt break or what I would call rule-based fiscal consolidation, which is an idea which was decided at the end of 2011, brought into a contract in March 2012 and now dramatically soon comes into force since January 2013. The European stabilization mechanism has the answer to the challenge that a European currency cannot rely just on a Washington DC US dollar-based stabilization mechanism like the IMF and has to develop similar answers, which are on the euro base. And finally, we started the work on the single supervisory mechanism, which will lead to a better understanding of the risk of the financial markets within the European Union. And actually, these name drops show how effectively we have tried to improve the European Union's framework. And this will probably lead in the next month into a debate whether a treaty change is necessary. There has been a president's report to be delivered to the heads of states. And then we will open to the debate of the future framework, which goes much beyond the question I just already raised. Finally, I want to focus on you that we have opened new fields and enhanced institutions, for example, like the European Investment Bank. We injected additional 10 billion euro capital in that institution. In the next four years, they will be ready to implement for the 60 billion euro investment. This is a tremendous chance for infrastructure in those countries and those partners where infrastructure is a growth-limitating factor. And we said to the AIB act as a partner for private investment. We need more private investment and private capital to solve our project. For example, the opportunity of project bonds seems to be at least at the moment underestimated in the public awareness and probably will, in the market surrounding we have at the moment, a safe haven. But it can be attractive. And another debate I want to focus on is concluding debate is a free trade zone, not just completion of the internal market within the European Union, which is a UK and Irish contribution to the debate, where free traders seems to be concentrated, at least in the political debate. But on the transatlantic dimension, we had a debate with the late Bush administration on the Transatlantic Partnership Initiative, which was focusing on non-tariff barriers on the transatlantic issue. The debate wasn't as fruitful as we expected with the administration that followed. But we were very glad, as Europeans, when the American vice president came to the Munich Security Conference and opening his statement with taking up the ideas of the Transatlantic Partnership Initiative and offering the debate on a free trade zone between Europe and the United States. And actually, the deepening of the single market and the transatlantic free trade can be a very cheap compared to fiscal investment, but effective contribution to sustainable growth. We underestimate the sources of trade that will lead us into our future. Ladies and gentlemen, this was my invitation for the debate. 2012, as a year of great uncertainties and tension, but it was a year of progress. Not least, the case of Ireland has shown that reform implementation is being honored. In 2013, we need to overcome the crisis and make progress towards further fiscal consolidation, rebalancing, and reform of the euro area. And if the Irish Republic exits during 2013, which I'm expecting, it will show one political message. If a European country comes in trouble, the European solidarity is steadily helping them. If solidarity is answered by behavioral change and solidity, these program countries are going to exit and can easily do their job without European solidarity. And if this is the storyline for Portugal next year and others to come, it is a very good notion for the European debate. Thank you very much.