Gains from integrating the European post-trade infrastructure - the case for Target 2 Securities

The aim of Target 2 Securities (T2S) is to make cross-border securities settlement transactions across Europe in central bank money as secure, efficient and cheap as domestic settlement transactions are today. Consequently, T2S will represent a genuine opportunity to achieve costs which are among the lowest in the world, benefiting financial participants. For example, Europe is comparable to the United States in terms of its economic size.

But whereas firms in the United States …