ECB’s Lane: Need Deeper Commitment to Trading Integration

20 November 2023

By Isabel Teles – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Executive Board member Philip Lane on Monday said that countries needed to pursue deeper and lasting trading relationships to achieve a better economic integration.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Lane said that ‘there are so many opportunities in becoming deeply integrated, but deep integration requires deep commitment.’

‘This can only happen if there is reliable and deep and long-lasting political trust between countries. Because that really is a deep form of integration, and for a deep form of integration, you need to be fully confident that that trading relation will be there for a long time’, he said.

Digitalization and climate change could play a central role and work together in the context of global trade, he said, since artificial intelligence and machine learning could help with the accountability of climate-related information.

‘More and more there will be an expectation that they [financial entities all over the world] are able to explain the carbon exposures of their whole network. That could be very positive if we think about the carbon content of trade’, he said.

Turning to the European perspective, he said that the ECB’s data showed that firms were ‘deeply committed to taking a global approach to production.’

There were challenges, such as the energy shock and the need to reassess political risks, he said, but Europe ‘is very deeply committed to trading around the world and it’s impressive in a very diverse world what substitution possibilities there are from one location to another location.’