to news related to the future path of short - term interest rates and cannot be contaminated by news relating to the announcement of the policy decision. a recent ecb study shows that there has been not only a general reduction in market reactions on governing council meeting days over time, but that the small remaining reactions relate much less to the surprise component for any given decision and much more to the surrounding communication and its implications for the future path of interest rates. 10 in a similar vein, a related research study finds that the ecb ’ s press conferences have – on average – larger effects on asset prices than do announcements of policy decisions. 11 at the same time, these larger effects on interest rates are accompanied by smaller effects on the volatility of asset prices, indicating that the signal to noise ratio of the press conference is high. this is not a surprising result at all. in fact, the q & a session allows journalists to pose clarifying questions and provides them with the opportunity to digest the information provided. accurate communication has yielded high predictability. there is compelling empirical evidence indicating that the ability of financial market participants to correctly anticipate the next monetary policy decision is – both in absolute terms and relative to other central banks – remarkably high. 12 for instance, out of a total of 153 days on which governing council meetings were held from 1999 to october 2008, financial markets were surprised – according to a common definition of the surprise element in this literature – on only eight occasions. the last surprise occurred in march 2003 when markets had actually perfectly anticipated that we would decrease our main policy rates, but they were rather surprised about the size of the change, which was smaller than expected at that time. market participants appear to have been able gradually to converge to a thorough understanding of the ecb ’ s monetary policy framework and communication mode. similar results on the degree of short - term predictability were found by a recent survey conducted by barclays capital among financial market participants. a sizeable majority of survey participants – 60 % – felt either “ very confident ” or “ confident ” in the way they were able to anticipate policy decisions by the ecb. brand, c., d. buncic and j. turunen ( 2006 ), “ the impact of ecb monetary policy decisions and communication on the yield curve ”, ecb working paper, no 657. ehrmann, m. and m. fratzscher ( 2007 ), “ explaining monetary policy in press conferences ”

yves mersch : reaping the benefits of payment services in a new regulatory environment speech by mr yves mersch, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at the european banking federation's executive committee, frankfurt am main, 22 february 2018. * * * the revised payment services directive ( psd2 ) has featured high on the agenda of the payments industry for some time and it will continue to do so. the regulatory technical standards ( rts ) on strong customer authentication and common and secure open standards of communication, which have been submitted by the european commission to the co - legislators for scrutiny, strike a fair balance between the previously diverging views of the different players. they should soon be finalised and then published in the official journal. the new legislative framework will support innovation and competition in retail payments ; it will enhance the security of payment transactions and the protection of consumer data. it will introduce major changes to which all payment service providers ( psps ) will have to adapt, and i encourage all psps to ensure the highest level of security in their payment services and adopt the requirements of the rts ahead of time. banks should also grasp the opportunity to work towards a single and standardised interface to communicate with third - party providers ( tpps ) across europe in a safe and efficient manner. cooperation with tpps and users is crucial in this context in order to deliver innovative, efficient and competitive services to the people of europe. let me explain this in more detail. security requirements during the transition period as co - chair of the european forum on the security of retail payments ( secure pay ), the ecb has contributed in particular to the rts in respect of strong customer authentication and common and secure open standards of communication, the guidelines on security measures for operational and security risks of payment services and the guidelines on major incident reporting. it is still involved in the finalisation of the guidelines on fraud data reporting requirements. now that member states have transposed or are about to transpose the psd2 and almost all pieces of secondary legislation have been finalised, i think we can say that the european market has taken a major step towards : increasing the protection of payment service users against fraud and possible abuses of their financial information, fostering the resilience of psps through harmonised minimum security requirements, and towards enabling competition in the field of payment services by introducing innovative payment services such as payment initiation services, account information services and issuing cardbased payment instruments where a