Speech by Commissioner Albuquerque at Eurofi's Financial Forum 2026

It is a pleasure to be here in Dublin, as always. This city is now widely regarded as one of Europe's most dynamic and internationally connected financial centres.

It is thus the ideal place to highlight the importance of our projects under the Savings and Investments Union strategy: integrate the capital and banking markets so that we all benefit from dynamic and internationally connected financial centres, wherever we may be in the European Union.

We can look at what Ireland did right to get to where it is today, and use it as a blueprint at Union scale. Having the Irish Council Presidency at this crucial moment when we are debating the Market Integration and Supervision Package is a happy coincidence that I hope will be translated into an ambitious agreement.

The success that we see here today does offer lessons as we consider our strategic outlook as a Union of 27 Member States.

Competitiveness is not something we inherit, or something we can take for granted. It is the result of strategic choices with a long-term horizon.

Success does not appear overnight, or in one big-bang moment, it is accumulated by making the right choices, over time.

Ladies and gentlemen, global geopolitical tensions are becoming more acute, with increasingly direct consequences for Europe. While many of these developments are beyond Europe's control, the choices we make in response belong to us. We need to make the right choices now, guided by a long-term vision for Europe's prosperity.

Before starting any process, we need to know what success actually looks like and how we will recognise it when we get there. If we don't, we run the risk of confusing outputs with outcomes.

Traditional measures of economic performance tend to focus on growth, productivity and innovation.  Europe must perform much better on all three – and we intend to do so. But our understanding of prosperity here in the EU is broader.