the december meeting, that the message that the market should take from this is that qe can ’ t last forever. is that a firm push, once again, that countries need to reform? so it won ’ t last forever, but again, we didn ’ t have that discussion yesterday, it ’ s too early to have the discussion on when it ends, and even when we taper. that discussion hasn ’ t started yet, because inflation is not firm enough, is not sustainable enough, and that will come, but it will come later. second, of course governments have to reform. anything we are doing is not going to push long - term growth in europe up. i mean, it ’ s not going to improve the potential growth rate of europe, and for that you need more productivity, you need a better employed labor force, and that ’ s not what the ecb can achieve. you said you ’ re not talking about tapering at this moment, but you must discuss what tapering would look like for the markets, particularly given the conditions in europe at this moment. do you worry about a ‘ taper tantrum ’ in the same way that we saw in the united states? 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches no, we haven ’ t really -, we haven ’ t discussed the shape, the other modalities of tapering. that discussion will come, it ’ s not coming yet. but do you worry, given the environment in europe that you ’ re literally just going to have to keep up with the stimulus, that you ’ re not going to be able to taper, as you ’ re talking about? one strategist told me this week that we ’ re going to see negative rates for two to three years in europe. i mean, that ’ s a real problem. we ’ ll be able to taper when we have to taper. we still don ’ t have to taper. so we ’ ve got a lot of political risk, as well, in europe this year. the president of the eurogroup said to me yesterday he worries about political paralysis, politicians afraid of voters and afraid of markets. that ’ s a problem. it is a risk, it is a risk for us. i mean, the ecb is not political animal, we are not a political institution, but we operate in an environment where we need reforms to make what we do more efficient, and we need political bodies, policy

could be the leader to unite us. we need to be united in any case. so given all those risks that you just mentioned, how resilient, or how vulnerable, is the eurozone? well, if you take a look back, it ’ s -, i think it ’ s fair to say that we are much more resilient, the eurozone is much more resilient than it was only a couple of years ago. the structures have been made stronger, reforms have started in countries, growth is now much higher, it is solid, it is firming up. we are much more solid. that said, we would like to be sure that the eurozone can withstand the kind of global shocks that we ’ ve seen in 2007, 2008, 2010. and for that we need to be even stronger, so we ’ ll need more solid institutions in the eurozone, we ’ ll need that sense of commonality that i was mentioning earlier, but for that to happen, you need countries to be closer. so you need countries to converge. you need each and every country to be stronger. so right now, we ’ re still vulnerable. we are not vulnerable, we are in a process of strengthening our structures, and the first step is for countries to reform, to provide their contribution, and then at some point there will be another discussion on how to pull things together, and how to make the eurozone stronger as a group. but really, the priority is for countries to reform, to bring their unemployment rate lower, to create productivity, to be business friendlier in each and every country. 4 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches