Keynote speech by Frank Elderson, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, at the SRB Legal Conference 2025

Brussels, 18 June 2025

Thank you for your kind invitation. It is a pleasure to join you this morning to discuss the key obstacles to completing the single European market from the ECB’s perspective.

40 years ago Jacques Delors presented a now-famous “White Paper”, outlining a bold and comprehensive vision for completing the single European market. This historic document identified 279 obstacles, many of them legal in nature, that stood in the way of the free movement of goods, people, capital and services across Europe.

Delors’ White Paper did not come out of nowhere – it was conceived as a solution to tackle the challenges plaguing Europe in 1985: eurosclerosis^[1], competitiveness crisis, paralysing political tensions. These issues dominated the headlines of the time.

Policymakers overcame these obstacles with the…