Martin Kocher: Why our changing world needs a strong euro
Keynote speech by Mr Martin Kocher, Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, the Austrian central bank, at the Lámfalussy Lectures Conference 2026, Vienna, 18 May 2026.
Dear Governor Varga, dear Mihály, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honour to address you at the 2026 Lámfalussy Lectures Conference. Thank you for this kind invitation! I would like to congratulate you on choosing such a timely topic: global imbalances in a changing world order.
Allow me, for the sake of argument, to view the current world through the lens of a medium-sized, innovative, export-oriented company in Europe – one of those many successful ones we have in Hungary, Austria, and other European countries. Let us take a very specialised auto part producer with a couple of hundred workers in Hungary. For this fictitious company, let's call it "Onlyup" for ease of reference, the last decades have always been challenging, and adaptation to change was the secret of its success.
Onlyup has expanded over the decades, it has developed new patents, it has explored new markets in the world, it has had better and worse years, but it was one of these medium-sized industrial companies that guaranteed stability in the rural area where it is located. Overall, both its management and its employees knew that they could weather exogenous shocks, and the overall expectations and trajectory was positive, at least until 2020.
Of course, many other companies failed to cope with the changes over the years, but the many Onlyups in our countries were able to employ those workers whose companies went out of business. They contributed to the public impression that the overall economic situation is generally following an upward trend; solid growth levels and better living standards were the norm.