Jean-Claude Trichet: Educational games "€conomia" and "Inflation
Island"
Remarks by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, at the launch
event for the educational games "€conomia" and "Inflation Island", Frankfurt am Main,
8 December 2010.
* * *
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I'd like to welcome you all to this launch event here today - in particular the students and
teachers who accepted our invitation. I also extend a warm welcome to all the other visitors,
notably the ECCO colleagues and media representatives - and to ECB staff members who
have worked on this project.
In recent years, central banks have become important communicators and since its founding
in 1998 the ECB has engaged on several avenues to broaden its outreach. The ECB was the
first major central bank in the world to hold a press conference immediately after the
Governing Council meeting to explain its monetary policy decisions. We publish a monthly
bulletin for specialised audiences. We have educational videos on our website for the
general public, we have games for children and of course we have our general publications.
In 2010, our website was visited approximately 25 million times. Every year, around 13,000
people visit the ECB and we talk to them about the economy and our work. But there is
always room for further improvement. And this is no time for complacency.
We want to reach out to you - young people who have grown up in a networked, multimedia
world. So we decided to develop games like these because their interactivity and playfulness
could help enhance the learning experience. Today we are launching "€conomia" and
"Inflation Island" on our website, and we will continue our work on such tools in the next few
years. We expect the games to make this institution and its activities more accessible. The
games are available in 22 European languages.
You have just been playing against each other in "€conomia" and I hope you found it
interesting and fun. But perhaps it wasn't so easy to keep inflation low and stable, in line with
our definition of price stability: less than 2%, but close to 2%. If that was the case, then the
games have already served a purpose, because in real life it is challenging to keep inflation
low and stable. Developing, producing and translating both games was quite a challenge as
well.
I'd like to thank everyone who has worked on the two games over the past year - the
Directorate Communications, which is responsible for the project, ECCO members, experts
from DG Economics and DG Market Operations, the language and software specialists.
Let me now officially launch the games [by sending a tweet on Twitter and pushing a button
to link of the game on the ECB's Website].
Now it's my pleasure to hand over the certificates and prizes. In equal 4th place are the
over the
European School of Frankfurt and the ISF International School Frankfurt [hands
certificates]
In third place is Lycée Français Victor Hugo [hands over the certificates and prizes]
over the certificates and
In second place is Friedrich-Dessauer Gymnasium [hands prizes]
And the winner is Liebigschule [hands over the certificates and prizes] Congratulations!