Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President and I are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference. We will now report on the outcome of today's meeting of the Governing Council. Based on our regular economic and monetary

analysis, we decided to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged. We continue to expect them to remain at their present levels for an extended period of time and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases.

Regarding non-standard monetary policy measures, we confirm that our net asset purchases at the current monthly pace of 30 billion euro are intended to run until the end of September 2018 or beyond,

if necessary, and in any case until the Governing Council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim. The euro system will continue to reinvest the

principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the asset purchase program for an extended period of time after the end of its net asset purchases, and in any case for as long as necessary. This will contribute both to favorable liquidity

conditions and to an appropriate monetary policy stance. Incoming information, including our staff projections, confirms the strong and broad-based growth momentum in the euro area economy, which is

projected to expand in the near term at a somewhat faster pace than previously expected. This outlook for growth confirms our confidence that inflation will converge towards our inflation aim of below but close to 2 percent

over the medium term. At the same time, measures of underlying inflation remain subdued and have yet to show convincing signs of a sustained upward trend. In this context, the Governing Council will

continue to monitor developments in the exchange rate and financial conditions with regard to their possible implications for the inflation outlook. Overall, an ample degree of monetary stimulus

remains necessary for underlying inflation pressures to continue to build up and support headline inflation developments over the medium term. This continued monetary support is provided by the net asset purchases, by the sizable stock of

acquired assets and the forthcoming reinvestments and by our forward guidance on interest rates. Let me now explain our assessment in greater detail, starting with economic analysis.

Real GDP increased by 0.6 percent quarter on quarter in the fourth quarter of 2017 after increasing by 0.7 percent in the third quarter. The latest economic data and survey results indicate continued strong and broad-based growth

momentum. Our monetary policy measures, which have facilitated the deleveraging process, continue to underpin domestic demand. Private consumption is supported by rising

employment, which is also benefitting from past labor market reforms and by growing household wealth. Business investment continues to strengthen on the back of very favorable financing conditions, rising corporate profitability and

solid demand. Housing investment has improved further over recent quarters. In addition, the broad-based global expansion is providing impetus to euro area exports. This assessment is broadly reflected in the

March 2018 ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area. These projections foresee annual real GDP increasing by 2.4 percent in 2018, 1.9 percent in 2019, and 1.7 percent in 2020.

Compared with the December 2017 euro system staff macroeconomic projections, the outlook for real GDP growth has been revised up for 2018 and remains unchanged for 2019 and 2020.

The risks surrounding the euro area growth outlook are assessed as broadly balanced. On the one hand, the prevailing positive cyclical momentum could lead to stronger growth in the near term. On the other hand, downside risks continue

to relate primarily to global factors, including rising protectionism and developments in foreign exchange and other financial markets. According to Eurostat's flash estimate, euro area annual HICP inflation decreased to 1.2

percent in February from 1.3 percent in January. This reflected mainly negative base effects in unprocessed food price inflation. Looking ahead on the basis of current futures

price for oil, annual rates of headline inflation are likely to hover around 1.5 percent for the remainder of this year. Measures of underlying inflation remain subdued

overall. Looking forward, they are expected to rise gradually over the medium term supported by our monetary policy measures. The continuing economic expansion, the corresponding absorption of economic slack, and

rising wage growth. This assessment is also broadly reflected in the March 2018 ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area, which foresee annual HICP inflation at 1.4 percent in 2018, 1.4 percent

in 2019, 1.7 percent in 2020. Compared with the December 2017 Euro system staff macroeconomic projections, the outlook for headline

HICP inflation has been revised down slightly for 2019 and remains unchanged for 2018 and 2020. Turning to the monetary analysis, Broad Money M3 continues to expand at a robust pace with an

annual rate of growth of 4.6 percent in January, this year unchanged from the previous month, reflecting the impact of the ECB's monetary policy measures and the low opportunity cost of holding the most liquid deposits.

Accordingly, the narrow monetary aggregate, M1, remained the main contributor to broad money growth, continuing to expand at a solid annual rate. The recovery in the growth of loans to the private sector observed since the beginning of

2014 is progressing. The annual growth rate of loans to non-financial corporations strengthened to 3.4 percent in January after 3.1 percent in December 2017, while the annual growth rate of loans to households remained unchanged at 2.9 percent.

The pass-through of the monetary policy measures put in place since June 2014 continues to significantly support borrowing conditions for firms and households, access to financing,

notably for small and medium-sized enterprises and credit flows across the euro area. To sum up, a cross-check of the outcome of the economic analysis with the signals coming from the monetary analysis confirmed the need for an ample degree of monetary accommodation.

To secure a sustained return of inflation rates towards levels that are below but close to 2 percent over the medium term. In order to reap the full benefits from our monetary policy measures, other policy areas must

contribute decisively to raising the longer-term growth potential and reducing vulnerabilities. The implementation of structural reforms in euro-area countries needs to be substantially stepped up to increase resilience, reduce structural unemployment, and boost euro-area

productivity and growth potential. Against the background of overall limited implementation of the 2017 country-specific recommendations as communicated by the European Commission yesterday, greater reform effort is necessary in the euro-area countries.

Regarding fiscal policies, the increasingly solid and broad-based expansion calls for rebuilding fiscal buffers. This is particularly important in countries where government debt remains high. All countries would benefit from intensifying

efforts towards achieving a more growth-friendly composition of public finances. A full, transparent, and consistent implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact and of the macroeconomic imbalance procedure over time and across countries remains essential to increase the

resilience of the euro-area economy. Deepening economic and monetary union remains a priority. The Governing Council urges specific and decisive steps to complete the banking union and the capital markets union.

We are now at your disposal for questions. Mr. President, thank you. Alessandro Speciale from Bloomberg. First question, I noticed that you have changed somewhat your monetary policy statement, dropping

the commitment to increase the size of quantitative easing if necessary. Could you explain the reasons for that, especially against the backdrop of trade war talks that we have been hearing and somewhat slowing down of survey indicators for the recovery?

And a second question on Latvia, on the affair surrounding Mr. Rimsavic, a Governing Council member. Do you see the fact that Latvian authorities are effectively blocking a Governing Council member from attending Governing Council meetings as an infringement of central bank independence?

And if not, why not? And also, do you feel the Latvian authorities have been not fully cooperating with ECB on this affair? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So first of all, the first question, let me just read to you what is the sentence we have removed.

By the way, it was a sentence introduced in 2016 when we cut our monthly purchases from 80 to 60. You can just, thinking about that, you can just figure out how different was the situation at that time. But this sentence says, if the outlook becomes less favorable or if financial conditions become

inconsistent with further progress towards sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, we stand ready to increase the asset purchase program in terms of size and or duration. So what we did was to remove the explicit reference to the likelihood of an increase in

the pace of purchases in the near future. And we shouldn't forget that we have kept the other reference to such a possibility when it says the Euro system will continue to reinvest the principal payments and this will continue for an

extended period of time after the end of net asset purchase and in any case for as long as necessary. So, all in all, if you read this decision, by the way, the decision was unanimous.

So that's what it is. It's substantially a backward looking decision without signals or implications for either our expectations or our reaction function. We still expect to expect the key ECB interest rates

to remain at their present levels for an extended period of time and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases. And it also hasn't changed our reaction function. We confirm that our net asset purchase at the

current monthly pace of 30 billion euro are intended to run until the end of September 2018 or beyond if necessary. And in any case, until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim. So that's what the decision is and that's

what it is, just it was unanimous, as I said. Now, if I may elaborate on also the second question about Latvia. Well, on Latvia, we are really, we don't have enough information and that's why today we are

sending a letter to the European Court of Justice to the governing council has decided again unanimously to ask for clarification by the Court of Justice of the European Union whether individual security measures imposed on the governor of Latvia's bank by the Latvian

Anti-Corruption Authority on 19th of February 2018 have had the effect of relieving him from office and comply and these measures comply with union law, in particular with Article 14.2 of the statute. So we are asking the ECJ for a clarification

on the present situation. Thank you. Mr. Sims? You mentioned that the pledge to, the removal of the pledge to increase quantitative easing

was unanimous, but in the run up to sort of that unanimous decision, did any policy maker call for a more radical change, perhaps dropping a link between the APP and inflation or taking out the option to extend the duration of the APP? And the second question on trade, could the U.S.

administration's plan tariffs by hurting the Eurozone's economy slow down the return of inflation to the ECB's target? Thank you. Thank you. Well, first question, as I said, was a unanimous decision, and there wasn't much discussion about

other possible changes in monetary policy for our future for the coming months. But just to sort of give you a sketchy summary of the discussion, was a kind of fairly in a sense usual blend of confidence, persistence and patience.

And the confidence because the latest incoming data on growth reduced the variance of the path of inflation converging to our inflation aim. But also persistence and patience, and here, of

course, you have different views. Some people are more confident, some people are less confident, and therefore they stress the persistence and patience. And there was a somewhat repeated reference to the uncertainty surrounding potential output growth

path. And the reason for that is that, first of all, we discussed several times about how complex are the measures of unemployment. But also there is a fact that strong growth may produce stronger potential output growth as well.

And if you look at the past structural reforms, the increases in labor supply, the increase in participation rates, the increase in productivity, basically all this increases the uncertainty about the potential output growth path, and

therefore about the size of the slack in the economy. So the policy will continue to be reactive, basically. That is some parts of our discussion. Another part was devoted to assessing the progress,

well, the possible progress we've made about inflation, where we said that basically, as I said, just read the inflation, headline inflation will hover around 1.5% for the remaining part of the year. But the underlying inflation measures remain subdued, and so even though we have strong

growth, we still have subdued inflation, and our mandate is in terms of price stability. So victory cannot be declared yet. Finally, when we discussed, you asked about monetary policy, basically we discussed the exchange

was about emphasizing all the pillars of our monetary policy. We have the flows of net purchases. We have the stock that it's accumulating. We have the reinvestment policy for an extended period of time, as I just read, and especially, we have the forward guidance on interest rate path,

and they were all important. Thank you. Ms. Giavaso, please. Oh, I'm sorry. You also asked a question about trade, perhaps I think maybe a question was going to be asked by some

of you, so I catch an answer to two people. So the immediate spillover impact of the trade measures, just if you have a static estimate, it's not going to be big. But what strikes me is that whatever convictions one has about trade, we and certainly the governing

council is on this line, we are convinced that disputes should be discussed and resolved in a multilateral framework, that unilateral decisions are dangerous.

And also, there is a certain, I would say, worry or concern about the state of international relations, because if you put tariffs against what are your allies, one wonders who the enemies are.

So I think these are two general considerations that are, I think, quite relevant. Now, on assessing the final impact of these measures, many factors come into play. First of all, is there going to be a retaliation or not?

The second is, what's going to be the response of the exchange rate? So far, we've seen that whenever there was a threat of putting tariffs towards another country, it was the dollar they would appreciate.

But things can be different from time to time, and it's just so. But third and most important is an aspect of all, say, I wouldn't call them yet trade wars, but certainly of all trade exchanges like we've seen.

And that's the effect on confidence. And the effect on confidence is very difficult to assess, estimate, forecast. But if it's a negative effect on confidence, that's going to be negative on both inflation and output.

There is concern in Brussels about the fate of pensions and the labor laws in Italy. What's the view of AECB? Well, we haven't discussed this today, really. We were so focused on our decision on monetary policy that we didn't discuss.

But the point is, generally speaking, that fiscal sustainability is of utmost concern in countries which have high debt. Mr. Schreierz. Thank you, Mark Schreierz, Berson's item.

I also have two questions. The first one, you've dropped the easing bias on QE. Does that also mean that you would argue that the risks to the inflation outlook have become broadly balanced, similar to growth? Or would you still say that the risks of the inflation outlook are tilted to the downside?

And the second one, a very different one, you are AECB president for more than six years now and member of the governing council for even longer. What would you say, what makes a good AECB president? What are the most important skills? Thank you. Thank you. Well, the second question is so easy to answer.

I let others judge. It's not up to me. But on the first, we were always, and it goes back in tradition, not to discuss risks about inflation. We discussed risks about growth, but with inflation,

but the point here is basically that we see headline inflation driven often by energy prices, food prices, and other components that are more volatile. And then we look at underlying inflation to judge the robustness of the convergence.

And these measures of underlying inflation are still, some of them actually ticked up a little, but others are still very, in general, they are subdued. So the picture isn't much different from last time, really. In this sense, I said before,

the decision we took today is sort of obviously uses incoming information that, as I said, has reduced the variance, but otherwise, it's really backward looking. It doesn't send any new signal. Ms. Jones?

Mr. Draghi, two questions. First of all, in a recent speech by Benoit Courrée, he seemed to make two remarks. The first was that the Eurozone is less at risk from a taper tantrum than the US, and second that- I'm sorry, I'm sorry. What do you say?

I missed the words. When you say the Eurozone is at? At less risk of a taper tantrum in the US when it comes time to draw a close to any new bond purchases under QE. The second that seemed to be that in bond markets, at least the flow of QE no longer matters. It's a lot more about the stock.

So I'd be interested in hearing yours and Mr. Constantio's views on these two points that Mr. Courrée made. My second question is on the Latvian issue and how it pertains to the division of labor between the European Central Bank and the National Central Banks.

You said at the European Parliament hearing recently that the permission to grant emergency loans was better lying with the European Central Bank than as it does at present with the National Central Bank. So was there a discussion of that today or was that planned? And are there any other areas

on which you think the powers should lie with the European Central Bank rather than National Central Banks or other national authorities? Thank you. Let me answer first to the second question. Now this experience we had, certainly is giving some lessons

we ought to really reflect on. First of all, what is the role of the, what's been the role of the ECB in this so far? The ECB has cooperated, has informed, and has requested.

And this is what the ECB does everywhere in these situations with the anti-money laundering, with the national common authorities. As you said, as you heard many times, the ECB is not competent in money laundering and it doesn't have investigative power.

But having said that, the situation, the current situation as far as anti-money laundering is concerned is not satisfactory. What you would like to see are two things. More cooperation between national common authorities on money laundering, more exchange of information,

more coordination, which can go, there's a spectrum here, can go from having a regular and frequent formalized exchange forum or even go up to a centralized authority for that.

And a second aspect, which is the cooperation between national common authorities and supervisors, both national supervisors and the SSM. And that's key. That's key because the money laundering activities, as far as banks are concerned, have produced

unavoidably reputational and legal consequences and therefore they create reputational and legal liabilities. And therefore the supervisor is gonna be called in to react to these risks or prevent them from happening.

That's what's so important, the cooperation between the competent authorities and the supervisor. Now, a different thing is, a partly different thing, is about the emergency liquidity assistance.

I have expressed in the European Parliament a view that I share with many Governing Council members and many board members, but it's not something that can be implemented immediately. My view, which, by the way, we had this experience, but we also had other experiences where the conclusion can't be other than

ELA should be centralized. It should be basically given through a process where the Governing Council participates and discusses and in the end decides. So whether this, this is not possible legally now. So it's an evolution of the system that at present time

I judge unsatisfactory and needs to be changed. Now, going back to your first question, first of all, I don't think Mr. Caray said flows don't matter.

Well, let me, yeah, let me try. Okay, so you see, it makes a big difference, but whether they matter or they matter slightly less than stocks, so it just, the first time that a reference to stock was made

was at the end of 2015 in a press conference I had where there was, I remember, a vast disappointment about the measures that the Governing Council had just decided, and I pointed out that even though the measures were probably not fulfilling our expectations, we still had the stocks

that were going to go up over the oncoming period of time. At that time, markets paid no attention whatsoever to stocks. Now, attention is on stocks. Now, the reason is not that there is actually more than a trade-off.

I would say that the two are complementary, and it's normal that this should be this way because you have, when the stocks were huge, when, sorry, when the flows were huge and the stocks were small, the flows mattered more. Now, gradually, this has changed, but this doesn't matter, the flows don't matter. In fact, flows at the present time matter a lot

also because of the sequence that we have in our monetary policy decision that is cast in stone, whereby the interest rate path depends on the dates of the net asset purchases program.

So, I think the discussion today showed that all four elements, including the reinvestment policy, but especially the forward guidance on interest rates are important. Thank you. Mr. Fellas?

Thank you, Tom Fellas from the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Draghi, you've played down the decision today to remove the easing bias, but I mean, the Governing Council felt it necessary to leave it until now. What is it that you think has changed in the last seven weeks to merit that move? It seems as if anything, the outlook has got more uncertain.

Second question is on your experience as ECB president. You have been personally credited with a lot of the decisions that the ECB has made over the last seven years. That reflects your ability to set the agenda in Governing Council meetings.

How much could a new ECB president with a different set of beliefs about QE, for instance, take the ECB along a different course given your knowledge of how the institution works? Thank you. Thank you. Let me answer the second question first. Listen, you keep on asking questions as if tomorrow I'm gonna leave. I just, I still have quite a time before my mandate expires

so we can, I may be willing to answer questions about myself at the date which is closer to the end of my mandate than it is today. But the other question is, as I said,

it's fundamentally a backward looking measure and what has changed? Well, we had several revisions of growth outlook and at the same time, we have a narrowing of the convergence path, of the variance around the path

which basically explains why in a sense, we are confident. It confirmed our previous confidence. That was the sort of the, that was the discussion we had. That's the main reason.

Also, if you read the words, these are really unlikely contingencies now, the ones that would suggest that we would activate this easing bias. So that was the reason why we did it and why we did it today.

Mr. Malin? Jan Malin, Handelsbert. Mr. President, markets seem to be very sensitive to any kind of news at the moment.

For example, as the reaction to the December minutes showed, would it not help to be a bit more clearer on the forward guidance to reduce the risk of such sudden market reactions? And my second question, a few weeks ago,

there were also some hiccups at the markets because there were sudden fears of increasing inflation. How do you see that risk or the risk of rising inflation expectations?

Thank you. Thank you. The second answer is, that was the market in the United States reacted to a number about inflation

which was following, by the way, a number about nominal wage growth. And they reacted, and in a sense, they reacted with a sharp market correction which was, in a sense, amplified by the conditions of financial markets,

especially the stocks, especially equity, the equity market. But it was mostly limited to equity market and it was pretty short in terms of reaction. In Europe, the situation is different. In Europe, we don't see wage growth of that amount,

we don't see inflation rates of that amount, so it's just that the risk is different. And I'm sorry, the first, what was the second question? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Look, if we accept, if we make exception

for what's happening in the United States between market correction, statements, various statements on trade and other issues, you would agree you don't see much volatility in our financial markets in the Eurozone. If anything, the volatility is mostly caused

by our own statements. So it's this angst that everything should be clear in advance isn't reflected in the markets. Mr. Pelino, right? Yeah, and let me add that this,

the reason, and I kind of hinted at the beginning, that the reason why we have these discussions is that there are different states of mind as far as the new information. There is uncertainty about potential output growth, there is uncertainty about the size of slack,

and this uncertainty is more present in some members than in others. And so you have, in some members, there is a little less confidence and more desire to wait for more data and to see. And in others, there is more confidence, and in a sense, confidence in the fact that, in the fact that they would like to say things

sooner rather than later. I think that's the main difference. But so far, whatever the difference in when to say things, the basic point is that the policy continues to remain reactive and not proactive.

Thank you. Mr. Pelino? Lino Pelino from Bright Talent Television. You said today that there is a strong momentum from the European economy, but some risks remain on the horizon.

And do you mean that the political instability in some countries, for example in Italy, could be a problem for the European growth and also for the stability in the euro area?

What we have seen in the past few cases of elections, outcomes, it doesn't suggest that markets reacted in a way that would undermine

confidence, and the reaction to the Italian elections has been more or less the same as it's been the reaction to other elections or to other major political events where most observers were foreseeing sharp corrections or high volatility.

So that's what it is at this point in time. It's not to underestimate the fact that protracted instability may undermine confidence, and as I said before, anything that undermines confidence is a negative, has a negative effect on both inflation and output. This was when I was discussing trade measures,

but it applies to all kinds of contingencies. Mr. Ewing. Jack Ewing, New York Times. I'd like to ask a question about Germany and reform.

The coalition agreement for the new grand coalition could be seen as rolling back some of the labor market reforms that were undertaken about 10 years ago and helped produce the low unemployment that you see in Germany today. Are you at all concerned, not only about Germany,

but that there may be some movement backward on reforms, and would that have any effect on growth, your estimates of growth, and on monetary policy? Thank you. Thank you. It's a very broad question, and therefore, it's very difficult to answer to.

But more generally, what one can say is that all the reforms that have increased productivity and growth ought to be left in place. And if these reforms had negative distributional consequences producing a more inequitable income

or wealth distribution, these distributional effects ought to be taken care. And I think if there is one aspect in which, generally speaking, policies, not only in Europe, I would say all over the world, have been insufficient was to take care of the distributional consequences

of reforms that basically were positive for growth, but not necessarily for equity. Mrs. Mastrobuoni.

Yes, Mr. Draghi. Back to the Italian elections. Aren't you worried about the fact that in one of the most pro-European countries, traditionally, the anti-European forces have gained more than 50% of the votes? What does this mean for the European project?

Don't you think that it could jeopardize even the Euro reforms? I mean, it's the third greatest country in Europe, in the Eurozone. My second question is on this day, it's the 8th of March. It's Women's Day. And don't you think it is a little bit sad, with all respect for Mr. de Guindos, that there are always men appointed for the ECB,

and that the presence of women in the Government Council end is still so rare? Thank you. Thank you. The first question, I really don't want to comment. I can only say that the Euro is irreversible, and progress on deepening, and I just

read it in the introductory statement what the Governing Council's view is about this. It does say, the Governing Council, deepening economic and monetary union remains a priority, and the Governing Council urges specific and decisive steps to complete the banking union and the capital markets union.

Now, on what you said, certainly, I think, certainly, the gender balance ought to be improved. And this ought to happen at all levels. By the way, let me congratulate Mr. de Guindos,

because the Governing Council approved him, and I'm absolutely confident that he is going to be a very, very good colleague of all of us. As far as the ECB is concerned, there will be a press release,

because we also are working on improving our gender situation, and there will be a press release stating what sort of initiatives we've undertaken, the board has approved recently. And these initiatives are undertaken

because we made significant progress since we set explicitly our targets, explicit targets which were not being set before. But still, this progress is less than what we wish,

and the numbers now fall short of our interim targets. So we introduced the gender targets in 2013, and right now, actually the end of last year,

27% of management positions were held by women, compared with an interim target of 29%. For the most senior management role, however, the share was 17% against an interim target of 24%. So we got to do some work here,

and there have been various initiatives. One is basically to ask the headhunters to focus on gender in the recruitment process. Another one is to sort of motivate the business managers

to, in this direction, to keep vacancies open possibly until the objective is reached. So there are various issues, various ways that we've done some work on.

And there's also another, oh yes, another important point is that the recruiting panels will now have a considerable presence of women. I remember we had a considerable presence of women,

because there are, in a sense, even often, there are unconscious biases that play a role, and that's why it's necessary to assure, I would say, much more significant presence of women in the recruitment

panels. Mr. Perez? Mr. Draghi, about the former Spanish Minister Luis de Guindos. Are you thinking about a re-profiling of the portfolio, the responsibilities of the governing council members,

having in mind his profile, his political profile? Thank you. We haven't really thought about this. Ms. Weisbach, please.

Annette Weisbach, CNBC. Let me bring you back what the market is expecting from the ECB. So when are you planning on giving, perhaps, more of an outlook toward what's going to happen in the second half of year? Before, you also were at least slightly guiding us

towards when we can expect to get some more information. And then the second question, let me bring you back to the trade aspect. You were saying that there's even room that perhaps the economy might do better than expected in the eurozone. But still, isn't there also quite a huge amount of downward potential, given the trade distortions which

could lay ahead, and given how export-oriented our eurozone economy is? Thank you. Thank you. And I'll answer immediately the second question. That's why we said that the risks of growth

are balanced in the sense we have some upward risk domestically, but some downward risk globally. And that's what we refer to with that. It's quite clear that if we have retaliation, we may have effects on confidence that I mentioned before. And this would, at the very least,

introduces higher uncertainty in the future growth path. But more generally, I think there are two main risks that one can see today. One is this one that I mentioned related to trade.

There's also another risk that is less mentioned these days. And that's the risk of financial deregulation in other major jurisdictions. We should not forget what the situation

was before the crisis, in the years leading to the crisis. Like today, we had an expansionary monetary policy which was justified by the conditions at that time, as ours is justified by the condition today. But in the 10 years before, 10, 12 years before the crisis,

there has been a systematic disruption of financial regulation in the major jurisdiction. And in this combination, we may disagree whether the source was predominantly one or the other.

But certainly, nobody would disagree about the combination of the two. And so I would flag this as one major risk for the years ahead, that we repeat the same mistake. Now, I should say also that the we is not

right in this context. Because in the eurozone, both national legislators and European legislators and the European Commission are certainly not on that path. But we are talking about a global market.

And so deregulation, massive deregulation in one part of the market, is going to affect the whole world. Sorry, the first question.

The information will follow our gradual assessment of the convergence of our inflation path to our objective.

And so as we see more information coming that says that this convergence is progressing, is becoming more robust, and is becoming more and more self-sustained, so will be the information. We'll be clearer. We'll be in a position to provide you

with more clarity about the oncoming developments. Mr. Di Vitoio. Thank you, Mr. Daggi. If core inflation will be below 2% by the end of July,

the QE, the quantitative easing, will be extended. The press release and the statement is clear. But hearing from your words will be different. Second question is, the country with the largest quantitative easing in quantitative terms is Germany. But Germany was already strong heaven

without quantitative easing. Is it dangerous for the equilibriums of the euro area, and is it a contradiction? Thank you. Now, responding to the first question, I mean, that's what I read here. And I repeat it. Regarding nonstandard monetary policy measures,

we confirm that our net asset purchases at the current monthly pace of 30 billion euro are intended to run until the end of September 2018 or beyond if necessary. And in any case, until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim. And before I reiterate this, we

continue to expect TCCB interest rates to remain at their present levels for an extended period of time and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases. Now, the second question is about one country. You know, we deal with price stability for the eurozone.

That's what matters. We don't look at individual countries. Or we do look at individual countries only so far the developments in individual countries are useful to assess the convergence to our objective. Our mandate is price stability for the whole of the euro area.

Thank you. And the final question for Ms. Boufaki. Mr. President, you were urging progress on banking union.

And the BIS is getting comments now on the regulatory treatment of soaring exposures by banks. And I'd like to know whether there is a comment or what is your view or your position on this. And the second question is broader on inflation

as there is a big debate on the fact that it isn't moving as fast as one would expect. And I wonder whether what's your view and what's the ECB view on the way to look at inflation and whether you agree that someone says we should throw

away the books on economics and maybe write some new paragraphs. Thank you. Thank you. Now, on the first point, as a matter of fact, the BIS, the Basel Committee, was not able to agree to a treatment of the sovereign exposures

seen in the banks' balance sheets. So there isn't any world treatment of sovereign exposures. As a matter of fact, most countries don't have any specific risk weight with respect to that.

The point is that we have, basically, our experience from the crisis in the eurozone has shown that sovereign bonds are not riskless. They're risky. And they are in banks. So these are risky assets in banks' portfolios.

So we have to take this into account. At the same time, we want to keep a level playing field across the world with the treatment of similar risks. So this is a complex issue that people are working on in the European Commission,

in the European Parliament. And we'll see how it will be addressed. Not simple to resolve. Now, the other point was about inflation. Should we throw away the books? Well, I think this was a suggestion

that was more frequent about until a year ago. Should we abandon the 2% objective? And then you had two views. One was we should lower it to 1% or 0%, some people said. And others said we should raise it to 4%.

Obviously, the aims were opposite. The ones that were suggesting 4%, the idea was that then expectations for inflation would adjust. And therefore, the monetary, the policy would have to become even more accommodative.

But the point is basically that the ECB is following best practice like all the other central banks, or most of them, certainly all the large central banks in the world. And there are good reasons for that. And on the other hand, there are serious costs about a change in cost of credibility,

anchoring of expectations. And we can go on on this for a while about changing objective. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.