european central bank : press conference – introductory statement introductory statement by mr jean - claude trichet, president of the european central bank and mr lucas papademos, vice - president of the european central bank, frankfurt am main, venice, 8 october 2009. * * * ladies and gentlemen, the vice - president and i are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference here in venice. i would like to thank governor draghi for his kind hospitality and to express our special gratitude to his staff for the excellent organisation of the meeting of the governing council. we will now report on the outcome of today ’ s meeting of the governing council, which was also attended by commissioner almunia. on the basis of its regular economic and monetary analyses, the governing council decided to leave the key ecb interest rates unchanged. the current rates remain appropriate. the incoming information and analyses since our last meeting in early september have confirmed our previous assessment. while annual hicp inflation was still slightly negative in september, according to eurostat ’ s flash estimate, it is expected to turn positive again in the coming months and to remain at moderately positive rates over the policy - relevant horizon. at the same time, the latest information further supports our view that the euro area economy is stabilising and is expected to recover at a gradual pace. however, uncertainty remains high. as regards medium to longer - term inflation expectations, they remain firmly anchored in line with the governing council ’ s aim of keeping inflation rates below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. the outcome of the monetary analysis confirms the assessment of low inflationary pressure over the medium term, as money and credit expansion continues to moderate. against this background, we expect price stability to be maintained over the medium term, thereby supporting the purchasing power of euro area households. let me now explain our assessment in further detail, starting with the economic analysis. available survey indicators continue to signal an ongoing stabilisation of economic activity. in particular, the euro area should benefit from a recovery in exports, the significant macroeconomic stimulus under way and the measures taken to restore the functioning of the financial system. in addition, following the substantial negative contributions in the first half of 2009, the inventory cycle is expected to contribute positively to real gdp growth in the second half of the year. however, uncertainty remains high and the volatility in incoming data warrants a cautious interpretation of the available information. overall, the recovery is expected to remain rather uneven. it will

upcoming energy transition, as agreed upon by more than 190 countries in paris in december 2015, as one of our economy ’ s key long - term challenges. in the report we urged our government to pursue a plausible and practicable path towards a carbon - neutral economy, as such a long - term view enables households and businesses to gradually adjust their investments, preventing excessive misallocation. and we also decided to take a closer look into climate risks for the dutch financial sector as part of our supervisory mandate. ii. risks : a thematic review of climate risks in the dutch financial sector which brings me to the second part of this speech. what are the risks that we see as a supervisor in the dutch financial sector? in 2017 we conducted a thematic review on this issue. in this review we took a deep dive into four topics : - climate - related damages for the insurance industry - risks for the financial sector from a potential flood - risks from the financing of carbon intensive assets, so called ‘ brown finance ’ - risks from the financing of assets and projects that are meant to contribute to the energy transition, so called ‘ green finance ’. today i want to share with you some key findings for banks, regarding the risks for brown and green finance. in terms of brown finance, one of the things we wanted to do was get an understanding of the size of the risks. how big of a risk is the energy transition for our banking sector? as a first step, we wanted to measure how exposed our financial industry is to sectors that need significant reforms to become carbon neutral. sectors such as fossil fuel producers, the utilities industry, heavy industry, agriculture and transportation. this wasn ’ t something that we could easily get from our supervisory data. which is why we welcome the work that the commission will do on developing a taxonomy for the sustainability of financial assets as part of their sustainable finance action plan. for our research, however we had to develop our own template for our financial sector to fill out. we sent this template to the three biggest banks, covering around 70 - 80 % of the market. what we found is that banks ’ balance sheet consist of around 11 % of exposures to carbon intensive industries. not surprisingly, most of these exposures are through loans, which makes banks less sensitive to market fluctuations than for example pension funds. moreover, most of these loans have maturities of less than five years, which should provide banks with sufficient scope to anticipate changes. especially if the transition is more