april. and i would like to emphasise that this decision was unanimous. the governing council is united by a common purpose. we are carefully monitoring the situation and we stand ready to do whatever is necessary to fulfil our mandate – just as we have done over the past twelve and a half years. this logic applies not only to our policy interest rate but also to the other measures we have adopted in response to the crisis. when the crisis hit, dysfunctional financial markets threatened our ability to steer the outlook for price stability with our standard interest rate instrument. in response, we adopted a number of non - standard measures to ensure that our interest rate decisions were transmitted to the broader economy, despite the problems in the financial sector and financial markets. in particular, the aim has been to enable banks – at any level of the monetary policy interest rate – to continue lending to household and firms. let me emphasise that our non - standard measures do not in any way impinge on our capacity to tighten our monetary policy stance in response to inflationary pressures. there is a clear separation principle between our non - standard measures and our interest rate policy. interest rate policy depends on the outlook for price stability. the use of nonstandard measures depends on the functioning of the monetary policy transmission and must be commensurate with the level of malfunctioning or disruption of money and financial markets and segments of markets. this separation principle is strictly applied. to give you a recent example, the governing council decided in march and april both that it was now time to increase interest rates and, at the same time, that it was appropriate to maintain in the second quarter the full allotment at fixed price refinancing on a 3 month duration. iii. conclusion damit komme ich zum schluss. die krise hat den euroraum vor große herausforderungen gestellt. aber wir haben diese herausforderungen angenommen. der euro hat sich als stabilitatsanker in sturmischer see erwiesen. davon haben alle – ich betone, alle – lander des euroraums profitiert. bei alledem sollten wir nicht ubersehen, dass der euroraum als ganzes in den vergangenen zwolf jahren erhebliche fortschritte gemacht hat. die

be a number of structural changes behind the increase in productivity, which are at least partly connected with globalisation. if one disregards the temporary increases in inflation caused by high prices for energy, for instance, one can observe a gradual decline in inflation over the past decade. in sweden cpi inflation has fallen from around 5 per cent in 1994 to approximately 2 per cent in 2003. even in a more long - term perspective, inflation shows a downward trend, which is illustrated in a figure showing inflation in oecd countries. other parts of the world have experienced a similar development. the imf ’ s previous chief economist ken rogoff has demonstrated in an article that global inflation has fallen from 30 per cent to 4 per cent between 1993 and 2002. which factors could lie behind this remarkable slowdown in the rate of price increase? i believe that it is mainly a combination of three factors : a change in monetary policy with independent central banks applying inflation - targeting, it investments enabling large - scale cost savings and globalisation that entails, among other things, increased competition from new low - wage countries and pressurises producer countries towards greater productivity. 1. independent central banks with inflation targets at the beginning of the 1990s, in the aftermath of the years of overheating and crisis, a process of reorientation of economic policy began in sweden : the tax system was reformed and combating inflation was given priority. the riksbank decided at the beginning of 1993 to introduce an inflation target, defined as 2 per cent with a tolerated deviation interval of plus / minus one percentage point, and fiscal policy was increasingly oriented towards budget consolidation. similar developments took place at around the same time in many other countries. the change in economic policy was particularly revolutionary in the former communist states in europe, in china and in developing countries that had previously been inspired by the planned economy, such as india, which contributed to these countries becoming increasingly integrated into the global economy. the fact that price stability has become an explicit target for monetary policy has thus played an important role in the slowdown in inflation over the past decade. it is only to be expected, given that inflation is a monetary phenomenon, which is ultimately determined by monetary policy and the confidence it inspires. independence for central banks, the convergence criteria for emu membership and a ban on financing budget deficits by printing more money are some examples of measures that have contributed to increasing confidence in the price stability target. in addition, improved communication and increased transparency have led