mario draghi : ecb press conference - introductory statement introductory statement by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, and mr vitor constancio, vice - president of the european central bank, frankfurt am main, 19 january 2017. * * * ladies and gentlemen, first of all let me wish you a happy new year. the vice - president and i are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference. we will now report on the outcome of today ’ s meeting of the governing council. based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we decided to keep the key ecb interest rates unchanged. we continue to expect them to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases. regarding non - standard monetary policy measures, we confirm that we will continue to make purchases under the asset purchase programme ( app ) at the current monthly pace of €80 billion until the end of march 2017 and that, from april 2017, our net asset purchases are intended to continue at a monthly pace of €60 billion until the end of december 2017, or beyond, if necessary, and in any case until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim. the net purchases will be made alongside reinvestments of the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the app. the governing council today also decided on further details of how the eurosystem will buy assets with yields below the interest rate on the deposit facility under its public sector purchase programme. these decisions will be published in a separate press release at 15. 30 cet. the monetary policy decisions taken in december 2016 have succeeded in preserving the very favourable financing conditions that are necessary to secure a sustained convergence of inflation rates towards levels below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. borrowing conditions for firms and households continue to benefit from the pass - through of our measures. as expected, headline inflation has increased lately, largely owing to base effects in energy prices, but underlying inflation pressures remain subdued. the governing council will continue to look through changes in hicp inflation if judged to be transient and to have no implication for the medium - term outlook for price stability. a very substantial degree of monetary accommodation is needed for euro area inflation pressures to build up and support headline inflation in the medium term. if warranted to achieve its objective, the governing council will act by using all the instruments available within its mandate. in particular

), ‘ understanding the effects of legalizing undocumented immigrants ’. education – the improvement in the education level of the european workforce during the past ten years is partly due to targeted policies ( though the latter differ greatly across countries ). for all the progress that has been made, however, there is evidence that european education systems are still struggling to equip workers with the skills they need. a recent survey 20 shows that, especially in southern european countries, an increasingly large share of workers are both over - educated, i. e., they received extra education not required for the job, and under - skilled, i. e., they lack certain specific task - related abilities. this suggests that many european education systems have not quite succeeded in integrating general and vocational education in an efficient, balanced way. the former appears to be biased towards purely academic knowledge, and to neglect the adaptable, problem - solving abilities required in the labour market. the latter focuses too narrowly on specific skills, which raise employability in the short term, but rapidly become obsolete. 21 in respect of education, italy has a problem of its own. indicators of formal education ( years of schooling, levels of educational attainment at specific ages ) have long been significantly lower in italy than in other countries at a comparable level of development. for a long time this did not seem to matter much. in the 1970s and 1980s, italy ’ s ‘ industrial districts ’ ( clusters of small, specialised manufacturing firms ) prospered largely on the strength of a peculiar, highly localised form of human capital, acquired in vocational schools, through on - the - job training, and through general social interaction ( sometimes called the ‘ local industrial climate ’ ). in that context, the returns to formal education appeared to be low. since then, however, the increasing global importance of technologyrelated skills has radically changed the picture ; the ‘ industrial climate ’, important as it is, is no longer enough. in fact, inadequate human capital development is, i suspect, one of the reasons behind the unsatisfactory productivity growth of the country in the past couple of decades. favoured by ( piecemeal ) reforms, some progress is being made along both dimensions of education : average schooling is up, and international comparisons of skills for young cohorts are now less unfavourable than they used to be. however, a gap remains, and in my opinion it receives less systematic public - policy attention than it deserves.