Single Market, shared opportunities

Keynote speech by Sharon Donnery, Member of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, at the 58th Soroptimist Ireland North-South Conference

Drogheda, 9 May 2026

In October 1939, as Europe was descending into war, a Soroptimist editor wrote that two things were clear: first, the need to unite and further international understanding; and second, when the nightmare had passed, the duty to place all the organisation’s influence on the side of a just and lasting peace.^[1][2]

11 years later, on 9 May 1950, Robert Schuman put a strikingly similar idea into political form. “World peace cannot be safeguarded,” he said, without “creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.” That sounds ambitious enough for any era – and perhaps also like a rather good motto for our own. Famously, he added: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”^[3]

As we celebrate Europe Day today, the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, those calls for lasting peace are worth remembering. One voice came from women’s civil society, the other from a European statesman. But both understood something essential: peace is not self-sustaining. It must be secured through cooperation, anchored in institutions and reinforced by solidarity across borders.

This is why I would like to bring together two themes today that may, at first sight, seem far apart: the European project and gender equality. In fact, they are more closely connected than they appear. The architects of European integration have often used economics in pursuit of a wider political purpose. The pooling of coal and steel was never simply about industrial efficiency. It was about binding countries so closely together that war would become not only unthinkable, but materially impossible.

The same logic appears, in a different way, in the story of equal pay. It may come as a surprise that equal pay was already written into the Treaty of Rome in 1957. But when it entered the Treaty, it was not seen only as a question of fairness. It was also part of building the common market. Some Member States had already introduced equal pay rules and were worried that their firms would be undercut by competitors in countries where women could still be paid less.^[4] So equal pay was also written into the Treaty to avoid distorting competition in the common market.

What began as market logic, however, evolved into something much larger. Ireland shows this in a particularly tangible way. In the early 1970s, women in the Irish civil service were still subject to the marriage bar, requiring them to retire on marriage. That rule was repealed in 1973. The change did not follow automatically from Ireland joining the European Communities. Domestic pressure for reform was already building. But membership made it much harder to preserve employment rules that sat uneasily with the emerging European framework of equality and non-discrimination.^[5][6] The direction of travel was clear: the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Act 1974 put equal pay into Irish law, and the Employment Equality Act 1977 broadened protection against discrimination in employment.

Gender equality is, of course, a matter of fairness. But it is also a matter of economic performance. The World Bank estimates that closing gender gaps in employment and entrepreneurship could raise global GDP by 20%.^[7] And the European Institute for Gender Equality has estimated that greater gender equality could lift GDP per capita in Europe by up to nearly 10% by 2050 and create up to 10.5 million additional jobs.^[8] So this is not only about justice, important though that is. It is also about whether Europe is making full use of its own human potential. In this speech, I focus in particular on the economic barriers that continue to affect women, while recognising that the broader goal is equal opportunities and dignity for everyone.

This brings me to my second theme: completing the Single Market.

Europe’s central economic challenge today is productivity. And the most powerful lever that Europe can use to raise productivity is its own home market. According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, Single Market barriers inside Europe are still equivalent to tariffs of around 44% for goods and 110% for services. Reducing these barriers to US internal market levels could raise long-run European productivity by nearly 7 percentage points.^[9]

For someone working in banking supervision, this matters in a very practical way. A more integrated Single Market would also make European banking supervision more effective. Even though we have made significant progress since the banking union was established, the framework is still shaped by too many national differences. The latest report on financial integration and structure in the euro area shows that integration has somewhat improved in recent years.^[10] However, important parts of the prudential regime, as well as areas such as accounting, securities and insolvency law, continue to vary across Member States. That adds complexity where Europe would benefit from more integration. A more harmonised framework would help credit flow more efficiently across the Single Market, while giving banks more room to grow, compete and serve customers across borders.^[11]

A deeper Single Market also needs deeper capital markets. This is the logic of the savings and investments union: to connect European savings with productive investment, give households better opportunities to build wealth, and help firms finance innovation, expansion and scale. In other words, if Europe wants more growth, it must become better at turning savings into investment and investment into productivity. That matters both for large companies and financial centres and for citizens, households and smaller businesses across Europe.

But we should not think about completing the Single Market only in geographical terms, as the removal of barriers between Member States. We should also think about it in human terms, as the removal of barriers to opportunity within them. A market is not truly single if it is open across borders but still segmented within societies. And that is where gender equality comes in.

One way to see this clearly is to look at wealth. Wealth is not shaped by one factor alone. It is the cumulative result of many small advantages and disadvantages over time – in access to information, in participation in the labour market, in salary, in career progression and in the ability to save and invest.^[12] In economic terms, these are frictions. When these frictions weigh more heavily on women, they do more than create inequality; they also leave talent and economic potential underused.

The first of these frictions relates to information.^[13] Markets work less well when access to knowledge, confidence and financial tools is uneven. This is precisely why the European Commission sees financial literacy as crucial for the savings and investments union. Studies show that women have, on average, lower financial literacy than men.^[14][15] If part of the population is less equipped to save, invest and plan for the long term, Europe is not drawing fully on its own financial resources.^[16]

With this in mind, we have built a central bank financial literacy network to share expertise and best practices among the euro area’s national central banks. In addition, we are working to harmonise and strengthen data by developing comparable financial literacy measures across Europe. To target the gender gap specifically, we have agreed to design and implement targeted financial literacy initiatives specifically for women.

The second friction affects how talent is used and rewarded. Talent cannot be allocated efficiently if the supporting conditions around work are underdeveloped. Childcare, care for older relatives, leave structures, flexible work, wages and career progression all matter here.^[17] Across the EU, seven out of ten women aged 20 to 64 are in employment, compared with eight out of ten men. This gap exists in Ireland, too.^[18] The European Commission estimates that this gender employment gap cost the EU economy €390 billion in 2023.^[19] Women still earn about 12% less per hour than men and receive pensions that are about 25% lower on average.^[20][21] When careers are interrupted more often, work is rewarded differently and progression is slower, the effects build up over a lifetime – the consequences are lower income, lower wealth and lower security.

I would frame the issue in this way: Europe leaves potential growth untapped when barriers remain in place, whether those barriers exist between countries or within them. Completing the Single Market means reducing both. It means removing obstacles to trade, services, capital and scale across borders, but it also means removing the frictions that stop people contributing fully within borders. Shared markets should also mean shared opportunity – because ultimately a market is only as strong as its ability to use the talent of all the people who live and work within it.

Let me conclude where I began.

In 1939 Soroptimists spoke of international understanding and of using their influence for a just and lasting peace. In 1950 Schuman argued that Europe must be built through “concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”. At the time that meant binding nations so closely together that war would become “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”.

Today, the same insight still holds. Europe grows stronger when solidarity takes a practical form: in removing barriers between countries, in widening opportunity within them and in making fuller use of the talent of all its people.