the real economy is reaching the real economy fairly reluctantly overall and at different speed levels across euro area countries. following its objective of safeguarding price stability, the ecb had to activate a variety of non - standard measures to improve the transmission of its accommodative monetary policy stance. however, we are still operating in a difficult bis central bankers ’ speeches environment and fragmentation of financing conditions across the euro area is one of the most prevalent problems. so let me finish with some key messages that, i think, characterise the policy landscape in the time to come : 1. monetary policy has helped to prevent economic outcomes to be even worse than what we see today. monetary policy accommodation is needed to keep prices in line with the ecb ’ s definition of price stability. 2. the ecb has not run out of ammunition. we can employ more tools and measures whenever they will be needed. 3. but monetary policy has limits : it is not effective when it comes to structural issues and we should keep in mind the challenges that arise from keeping interest rates too low for too long. therefore we should not forget about the responsibilities of other policy areas : 1. a properly designed banking union is essential to restore financial integration and to support a new steady state where bank balance sheets will be fit for lending 2. fiscal consolidation is required to spur and maintain confidence of consumers and investors 3. structural reforms are key to bring euro area economies back on a sustainable growth path. for the ecb, the different crisis modes required various modifications in our tool box of monetary policy instruments. but our objective of price stability remained time - invariant. it has served as an anchor of stability in the euro area during the crisis ; it is helping the transition to a new steady state of a better - integrated euro area economy ; and it will certainly remain our guiding principle in the future. thank you for your attention. bis central bankers ’ speeches

should remain accommodative as long as necessary and we kept interest rates unchanged. beyond this decision on rates, there is an on - going debate on further measures the ecb could take, if necessary, to provide additional accommodation or improve funding conditions, although, as i mentioned, fragmentation on the funding side is of lesser concern than on the lending side. this debate has taken a broad scope, including for instance : measures to revitalise the market for asset backed securities ; additional long - term refinancing operations ; enhancing the framework for additional credit claims ; and broader or targeted changes in collateral policies. all these limited measures are under study or theoretically available on the shelf. it is in this context, that also the issue of setting a negative rate on the deposit facility has come up. speaking here in denmark today, i would like to say a few more words on our decision on the level of that deposit facility rate. some commentators wondered whether we would consider taking this rate to negative territory, and many of those drew comparisons to the danish case, where the central bank had decreased the rate on certificates of deposits to minus 20 basis points in july 2012. the possibly negative deposit rate is one facet of the so - called “ zero lower bound ” debate. while this concept enjoyed some prominence in the academic literature for several years, it seems to have now spread into something routinely discussed in taxi - drive small talks. at first sight, the term “ zero lower bound ” seems to provide for an unambiguous metric : once the relevant monetary policy rate is zero, it cannot fall any further. bis central bankers ’ speeches one reasoning behind this is that any type of nominal interest rate cannot fall below zero. anybody holding an asset with such negative remuneration would simply switch to cash. then he would ‘ at least ’ earn a nominal return of zero. however, this reasoning may be incomplete. one example is the case of negative deposit certificate rates at the danish central bank that i already mentioned. so obviously, under certain circumstances, some assets provide particular services that make market participants willing to hold these assets although they display negative interest rates. to understand the nature of the question on possible negative deposit rates in the euro area, let me quickly recall that the ecb operates a corridor system consisting of three rates. first, the main refinancing rate is the interest the ecb charges in the main refinancing operations with its counterparties. it usually provides the mid -