Speech by Boris Vujčić, Vice-President of the ECB, at the Central Bank of Ireland’s Financial System Conference

Dublin, 2 November 2026

Thank you to the Central Bank of Ireland for organising this conference and inviting me to speak. It is a great pleasure to be here in Dublin. Ireland illustrates why the topics of today’s event – from geopolitics to financial resilience – are timely.

Ireland has one of the most open economies in the world and it is deeply integrated into European and global markets. It is a Single Market success story, and a reminder that openness remains one of Europe’s greatest strengths.

But openness works both ways. A shift in US trade policy or a turn in global capital flows can spill over to the Irish economy particularly quickly.

What is true for Ireland is also true on a larger scale for the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc.^[1] So, the question I would like to discuss today is simple to ask but harder to answer: how do we retain the benefits…