The potential benefits from having a fully integrated and effectively regulated EU-wide financial services sector could be in the order of 60 billion euro per year, through interest savings alone. Additional costs and benefits remain to be assessed. Given that language barriers and other significant constraints – together with locking-in effects, vertical integration and possible country-risk pricing – will undoubtedly persist, even with the further integration of financial markets, the potential gain of 116 billion euro would need to be discounted, leading to the use here of a more modest figure of some 60 billion euro per year. For the time being, possible additional impacts, such as efficiency gains from other forms of credit, as well as the indirect positive impact on the operations of enterprises which use cheaper financing, are not taken into account.
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