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It is a pleasure to join you today at the European Investment Bank Forum - a cornerstone of Europe's investment capacity and a symbol of our ability to transform common ambition into concrete projects.

We meet at a moment when developments in the Middle East have escalated markedly, with repercussions now reaching even Europe's shores. What is unfolding amounts to an unprecedented and deeply concerning crisis, placing significant strain on an already fragile international order.

At a time when geopolitical shocks are multiplying, our economies have no room for complacency. For Europe, the stakes are both economic and strategic. This is a matter of strength, autonomy, and resilience.

The Middle East lies at the heart of global energy flows and critical trade corridors. When instability reaches this core, the consequences are immediate and measurable. Energy prices rise. Transportation and insurance costs increase.

The full scale of the impact will depend on the duration of the crisis. That is where the real effects on shipping, supply chains, and investor confidence will become evident. The longer uncertainty persists, the wider the economic footprint of the crisis.

The era of geopolitical innocence is over. European sovereignty is no longer an abstract ambition - it is a condition for economic survival and institutional strength.

It is our capacity:

• to absorb external shocks,
• to safeguard our energy security,
• to protect our productive base,
• and to act early, collectively, and decisively.

What is required now is a clear sense of urgency - with the full understanding that, in times of crisis, time is never neutral.

Europe possesses the tools to shape events and to reaffirm its strategic power. We must move swiftly and in coordination to ensure that it does.

Europe has proven its resilience. We have absorbed financial turmoil, sovereign debt stress, a pandemic, and an energy shock. We protected our societies. We stabilised our economies. We acted together when it mattered.

But resilience is not a growth strategy.

Today, Europe faces a structural competitiveness problem. Productivity growth has lagged for too long, and the gap with the United States has widened over two decades. At the same time, demographic headwinds are becoming binding constraints. By 2040, Europe's workforce could shrink by close to two million people per year.

That matters because it changes the equation. Growth can no longer rely on expanding labour supply. It must come from higher productivity. And higher productivity comes from innovation, investment and efficient capital allocation.

So, the strategic task in front of us is clear. We must mobilise capital more effectively to finance innovation and scale. That is the only lever that can raise productivity, increase incomes, strengthen strategic autonomy and build resilience.

Europe does not suffer from a lack of savings. We suffer from a lack of mobilisation.

Every year, Europeans save roughly €1.4 trillion - and too much of it remains in low-yield deposits. Meanwhile, our competitors invest more heavily in frontier technologies and scale faster.

You can see this in the numbers. R&D intensity in the EU is around 2.2% of GDP, compared with roughly 3.4% in the United States. Venture capital investment is roughly 0.3% of GDP in Europe, compared with around 0.7% in the United States¹.

These are not abstract statistics. They translate into whether companies can grow, whether ideas can scale, and whether Europe sets standards or adopts them.

This gap is not accidental. It reflects structural features of our financial system: a stronger reliance on bank-based intermediation, fragmented capital markets, and a risk culture that too often favours preservation over scale.

So here is the core diagnosis: Europe does not lack ideas. It does not lack talent. It does not lack savings. What it lacks is the scale and the channels to turn savings into innovation.

That is why the Savings and Investment Union matters so much. It is the structural reform Europe has postponed for too long.

But it is also why we must now speak seriously about the next layer: modernising the infrastructure through which capital moves.

This is where the EIB Group is essential.

The EIB and the EIF are not only lenders. They are builders of European capacity. They de-risk investment where markets hesitate. They bring projects to bankability. They create standards. They help Europe crowd in private capital.

In other words: the EIB Group is one of the few institutions with the mandate and the credibility to bridge Europe's savings with Europe's need for scale.

If Europe wants to compete, we need more projects that are investable, more markets that are investable, and more pathways for private capital to follow public de-risking.

That is not a slogan. It is the practical mechanics of competitiveness.

And it is why the theme of this Forum - strengthening competitiveness and security - is not only timely. It is unavoidable.

This brings me to the focus of my remarks: digital finance. Digital finance is not a marginal upgrade. It is a structural transformation in how capital is raised, allocated, settled and supervised.

The transformation will happen. The real question is whether Europe shapes it - or whether Europe adapts to frameworks designed elsewhere.

If we get this right, digital finance can do something profoundly important for Europe: it can compress distance.

It can compress the distance between savers and innovators. It can compress the distance between small firms and deep pools of capital. It can compress the distance between national markets and a genuinely European market.

Distributed ledger technologies can reduce frictions in clearing and settlement, lower issuance and intermediation costs, accelerate cross-border payments and expand access to investment. Tokenisation can reduce issuance costs - particularly for SMEs - and connect companies to wider investor bases across Europe.

The point is not technology for its own sake. The point is whether we can lower the structural cost of capital in Europe, and whether we can allocate capital faster and more efficiently to productive investment.

The rewards are real: greater inclusion, more competition, lower costs for innovators, deeper pools of finance for entrepreneurs, and more transparency for investors. But only if we embed this within a coherent European framework.

The Savings and Investment Union deepens and integrates capital markets across Europe. Digital finance modernises the infrastructure that allows those markets to function efficiently at scale.

Integration without modern infrastructure will be slower, more expensive, and less competitive. Modern infrastructure without integration will remain fragmented and small.

So, this is not two parallel agendas. It is one strategic project: integration and modernisation advancing together.

This is how we mobilise Europe's savings more effectively. This is how we fund innovation at scale. And this is how we build the European capacity that our competitiveness and security now depend on.

But where there is promise, there is risk. And Europe has learned this lesson before.

Financial innovation delivers efficiency, but it also requires further coordinated supervision and robust governance if we want trust and stability to travel with it. So we must be clear about the risks we are managing.

First, fragmentation. We cannot allow digital innovation to fracture our markets into national silos. We cannot allow platform ecosystems to grow into new forms of market separation.

Second, volatility and instability. Crypto-assets and stablecoins have shown how quickly innovation can outpace oversight. Cyber risk is not a side issue; it is systemic.

The lesson is straightforward: innovation without trust does not scale. And trust is not created by optimism. It is created by rules, supervision, and credible enforcement.

Europe has already taken an important step with MiCAR. It has demonstrated that smart regulation can build trust - and trust enables scale.

At the same time, preserving trust and stability in an increasingly digital financial ecosystem remains essential. In this context, the digital euro is a key strategic initiative.

As President Lagarde has argued, it is about ensuring that central bank money remains available in the digital age - complementing cash, supporting innovation in payments, strengthening Europe's monetary sovereignty, and reinforcing the resilience and autonomy of European payment systems.

We are now moving beyond the preparation phase and into the next stage of technical work. If the legislative framework is agreed during 2026, a pilot can follow in 2027, with the system ready for a potential issuance around 2029. The point is not speed for its own sake. The point is that Europe must not outsource the foundations of its payments architecture.

There is also a geopolitical dimension.

In an era defined by technological rivalry and strategic competition, financial infrastructure is an instrument of sovereignty. The question is not whether digital finance will grow. The question is whether it strengthens Europe's autonomy and stability - or whether it creates new dependencies.

Europe must ensure that digital innovation fortifies, rather than weakens, the integrity and resilience of our financial system.

That means maintaining monetary independence. It means ensuring secure rails for payments and settlement. It means rules that protect stability and consumers, while enabling markets to scale.

The choice is not between innovation and stability. The real question is whether we have the strategic clarity - and the political confidence - to achieve both.

Let me end with what success would look like.

Success is a Europe where savings do not sit idle while innovators search for capital. Success is a Europe where a company can scale across borders as easily as it scales within a single member state. Success is a Europe where technology lowers costs and expands opportunity, without undermining stability. Success is a Europe where capital markets do what they are meant to do: allocate capital efficiently to productive growth.

And institutions like the EIB Group will remain central - not only as financiers, but as builders of European capacity, accelerators of investment, and anchors of trust.

That is the direction Europe must now choose: not simply to manage stability, but to build the foundations of the next wave of prosperity.

¹ R&D intensity in the EU stands at 2.2% of GDP, compared with roughly 3.4% in the United States. The EU accounts for around 18% of global R&D spending, while the US accounts for about 30% and China roughly 26%. In artificial intelligence, private investment in Europe is only around one-eighth of US levels. Venture capital investment amounts to roughly 0.3% of GDP in the EU, compared with around 0.7% in the United States. In frontier technologies such as AI, batteries and quantum computing, China now produces more patents than the EU and the US combined.