1987 to enter into the " joint declaration " with the two sides of industry concerning the introduction of labour - market pensions via collective agreements. four years later, this declaration was implemented in an actual collective agreement between the danish federation of trade unions and the danish employers'confederation introducing compulsory pension contributions. there were several reasons why the pensions were privately based. in my opinion, the decisive factor was the tax burden in denmark, which by the mid - 1980s had reached a level of around 50 per cent. there was broad political consensus that a further increase in taxation would lead to unsustainable imbalances in society. it could also be claimed that a pension system based on individual contributions is more robust to the development in the eu with an increasingly mobile workforce, although i am not aware that this argument was put forward. so, out of the almost universally acknowledged need for increased savings in the economy and wage earners'wish for pensions that were more in line with the incomes they had grown accustomed to, arose the mixture that became the danish pension system. in many ways it has served us well, and it has certainly helped to solve the problem of insufficient savings in the economy. in fact, multi - pillar pension systems such as the danish system are often singled out in international contexts as a good benchmark for countering the demographic challenges that we will face in the coming decades as the population ages. our pension system is based on three pillars : firstly, the state retirement pension and atp ; secondly, the compulsory labour - market pensions ; and finally, private pensions, including capital pensions. to this should be added equity in homes and summer cottages, as well as other savings. the system is also based on three financing pillars : financing via taxes, compulsory savings and voluntary savings. consequently, the individual citizen's risk in relation to the size of future pension disbursements is diversified, which makes the system robust. pension savings have boomed throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium. it all started with the collective bargaining in 1991, when the two sides of industry agreed that 0. 9 per cent of wages should be paid into a pension scheme. wage earners were to pay one third, while employers were to pay two thirds. since then we have seen a continuous increase in pension contributions in connection with subsequent collective bargaining. today, the pension contributions of many wage earners constitute more than 10 per cent of their basic wages, and the labour - market pension funds – i. e. excluding atp,

a shift in the proportion of participants reporting expected inflation rates above 4 per cent. in line with the literature on household inflation expectations, the most important signal is conveyed by the shift in the distribution of beliefs about future inflation more than the precise level of expected inflation. chart 12 inflation expectations in the ecb consumer expectations survey ( left panel : annual percentage changes ; right panel : annual percentage changes ; percentages of respondents ) sources : ecb consumer expectations survey and ecb staff calculations. notes : “ median ” refers to the median across individual respondents. data is winsorised at the 2nd and 98th percentile. the latest observations are for march 2022. taken together, charts 10 - 12 indicate that there has been a substantial and widespread shift in longerterm inflation expectations since early 2021, largely in the direction of re - anchoring expected inflation at the two percent target. this suggests that the euro area is unlikely to revert to the persistent belowtarget inflation trend that was so entrenched before the pandemic. at the same time, the most recent signals from surveys and market - based measures also suggest that the right tail of the distribution is expanding, which warrants close monitoring. monetary policy in recent years, the monetary stance of the ecb has been determined by a combination of policy measures : the low level of the key policy rates, rate forward guidance, asset purchases and targeted lending operations. the period of very low interest rates for banks in the targeted lending programme ( tltro iii ) is scheduled to end next month. moreover, as shown in chart 13, there has been a very substantial decline in the rate of asset purchases in recent months and the governing council expects to end net purchases under the asset purchase programme ( app ) in the third quarter. chart 13 monthly flow of net purchases under app and pepp ( eur billions ) source : ecb. notes : the chart shows aggregated net purchases for all public and private app and pepp programmes at month - end. the latest observation is for 30 april 2022. the values for may and june 2022 were inferred from the ecb ’ s most recent monetary policy announcement ( 14 april 2022 ). furthermore, as shown in chart 14, there has been a remarkable shift in the yield curve during the initial months of 2022. in part, this reflects the re - pricing of risk premia in the current highly - uncertain environment. in part, it reflects the anticipation of market participants