ECB’s de Cos Highlights ‘New Questions About the Future of Globalisation’

12 February 2024

By David Barwick – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Pablo Hernández de Cos on Monday said that Europe had to be particularly attentive to issues of suppy security and that regionalisation could supplant globalisation.

Opening a statistics conference at the Banco de España, which he heads, de Cos noted the ‘accumulation of certain vulnerabilities’ as a negative consequence of globalization.

Even before the shocks of early this decade related to the pandemic and Russian aggression, trade tensions already existed, he observed.

With the new conflict in the Middle East, there are ‘new questions about the future of globalisation and the growing importance of geopolitical factors in economic relationships’, he said.

Supply security concerns were thus growing and were of particular relevance for an economy like Europe, he said.

‘We are more open and, therefore, more dependent, so we have to be particularly concerned about the potential risks that could arise from changing patterns in globalisation if these changes do not take place in an orderly manner’, he said

‘In this new globalisation context, governments and firms could be moving towards a scenario where they favour diversification over dependence, security over efficiency, or regionalisation over globalisation’, he said.