it's what jean-claude trichet would advocate. does highlight is the difficult of agreeing policy in europe. and i'm wondering what risks that has, if that gets worse, potentially, or just doesn't improve. >> well, here, i think the key focus lies away from the banking sector and lies with the -- next major selections, narrow actions in france. we know that lepenn is doing very, very well. we know the other rising parties have been doing well over the last year or so. what do we do after the european elections next year if we find the european parliament has a large number of appear tie european or should i say less pro european members? that will make the situation much than it is this year and, therefore, i would imagine getting policies through, reaching agreement could become a major risk. when does the market start to discount this? it's too early yet. i would imagine sometime by mid february the markets would start to focus on france, indeed. >> i'm focused on france. it's currently flirting with recession. and this is the c

stephane has been speaking to jean-claude trichet. was he happy about it? >> jean-claude trichet says that the bank would be able to rebalance their books ahead of the new stress tests next year, but still, he believes that the banking union remains a work in progress. this is what he told me. >> it is the idea, it is the very concept is to decouple the creditworthiness of the banks and the creditworthiness of the states in order to avoid vicious circles that we have observed in the crisis. i take it that this is the goal and i expect that that goal will be attained. it's a work in progress. we have to see how the supervisory function will be -- and we just had an accord in principal for the single resolution mechanism. and he think it's very important because the devil is in the details. >> what do you expect from this new round of stress tests? >> the asset quality review and the other issue is the stress tests. these are two different exercise. one is you look ae assets and judge the quality. the other is what would happen if we had new shocks that would

. >>> it's been over two years since jean-claude trichet left the ecb. they've embarked on an ambitious program. trichet says despite the global economy moving forward, structural reforms remain key for europe. >> we are clearly now again glowing, of course, at the global level with good surprises in some advanced economies and perhaps slowing down in some economies. we have look at each economy. taken into account it was a euro that would be a euro dove, of course. >> are you confident about the economic recovery in europe? >> i think europe has done very, very hard work in its adjustment so the countries that we have under stress by markets, the five countries in particular are under very, very tough stress have recovered and they are now more balanced than when they were highly in deficit in '09 -- '08-'09. so i think that now we will be in positive figures, that's clear. it is what they would say international institutions are projecting, something around 1%. it's not brilliant obviously. a lot of structural reform remains of the essence in europe in