i said, we went really deep into the analysis of the labour market and tried to really understand the forces behind inflation to better fight it. it was a very, very broad consensus. by the way, i just want to remind that it was a twofold decision. it was, number one, the 25 basis points but it was also the decision, or the confirmation, that we would stop any reinvestment under the app. what does the ecb know about lag effects? what takes longer to transmit into the economy? what are you looking at more closely? the second question, about your targets. according to projections you do not expect to reach the inflation target in the next three years. some economists suggest that this target 6 / 10 bis - central bankers'speeches is no longer valid, that 3 % will be the new 2 %. what do you have to say about that? we have a target. we have agreed on the target. we are in the middle of that fight against inflation and this is what we know. we're going to get to that 2 % and we're going to reduce it to 2 %. what happens next is another story, but we want to be at target and we want to be confident that it remains at target. so, the two elements are going to really drive our monetary policy going forward. on the lag time : we know that there is lag time, that the decisions that we have made in the last soon - to - be - a - year – which are monumental, by all accounts, both in terms of speed, in terms of height, volume of hikes, if you will, and we are seeing some effects. we are seeing it in market rates. we are seeing it in banking, financing. we are seeing it in credit, both in volumes and in rates. there is some lag time – not that much by textbook standards, which will typically say that it's anywhere between 18 and 24 months, maybe a bit more. but because it is so unprecedented and such an exceptional situation, we really have to monitor that very carefully. whether it is going to be faster, whether it is going to be a bit more slow because there has been variation in the terms of loans, for instance, to both corporates and mortgages and therefore the transmission is not operating as smoothly as it would if everything was at floating rates. all of that we are looking at extremely carefully to measure the transmission

objective that we have is very clear. the destination we know. the journey to get there is not over and we have ground to cover. so, we will be as restrictive as long as needed in order to make sure that we reach that destination. under the current parameters, 2. 2 % in 2025 is not satisfactory and it's not timely – which is why we are making the decisions that we are making today, and later on. at the end of june banks will reimburse €477 billion that they had borrowed under tltro, which was this very special facility that we had put in place to help the financing of the economy at the time of the pandemic. those loans were granted for periods of three years and there were various operations in the course of the pandemic. the repayment which is coming due now, is known and has been known for a long time. actually it was so well - known that it should have been a lot higher than that but we took measures in order to avoid that we had this sort of cliff effect of a massive reimbursement which would have exceeded €1 trillion. but banks know about it, they have known about it. they have done their funding plans in order to respond to the situation. in any event, we have the normal facilities available, whether it's mro or ltro if that was ever needed, just in case. the app reinvestment will be completed at the end of june, and we will let run - off take place as of july. we have experienced that partial reinvestment now for a few months because it was decided back in march. it has been well - absorbed by markets. we have not observed any disruption. given the amounts that we are talking about, we have reasons to believe that it should be absorbed also in a smooth manner. but, of course, we will be very attentive. we will look at this process. we will, as i said, always have the means to take action and to use all the tools that we have available if it was needed. you've touched on the problem of the wage increases. at your speech at the european parliament, you touched on the problem of corporate profits. if you take these both together, how confident are you that the relevant parties actually start to be more moderate on this, in particular as both of them start to criticise that interest rates are already too high? the second question