mario draghi : opening speech at the european banking congress “ the future of europe ” opening speech by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, at the european banking congress “ the future of europe ”, frankfurt am main, 22 november 2013. * * * ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. while the situation in the euro area has improved greatly over the last year, we are still faced with considerable challenges. we need to secure the economic recovery, reduce fragmentation in the euro area and continue the process of institutional and structural reform. to achieve this, it is essential that we do not retreat into purely national perspectives, with a narrow view of our interest. we must keep our european perspective – and stand up for our common interests. i would like to use my remarks today to highlight two areas where this european perspective is key. the first is the monetary policy. monetary policy with a single currency will always have different effects in different places. but it is essential to understand that the ecb, by its mandate, must act for the euro area as a whole. and in doing so, it makes the best contribution to prosperity for european society at large. the second area is the creation of banking union, notably the single supervisory mechanism ( ssm ). the ssm will create the first ever genuinely european supervision and we must take advantage of the opportunities this provides. for banks, it offers a unique opportunity to restore confidence and attract private investors, also through the ecb ’ s comprehensive assessment. for the wider euro area, it offers a possibility to deepen financial integration and reduce fragmentation. for this process to be effective, a strong single resolution mechanism ( srm ) is essential. the ecb ’ s monetary policy starting with the ecb ’ s monetary policy, our mandate is inherently european – it is to maintain price stability for the euro area as a whole. and this mandate is symmetric ; don ’ t forget that price stability works in both directions. we need to act as much when there is a risk that inflation in the medium term might become too low as well as too high. as i had the opportunity to explain yesterday, when we took our recent decision to cut interest rates, we saw a situation where the inflation outlook deviated too strongly away to the downside from our price stability mandate. our decision was necessary to comply with our mandate. i also had the opportunity to address some concerns this decision has raised. let me briefly come

union. establishing an effective communication policy was particularly important for a young institution that did not have its own track record, as was the case when the ecb started its operations in 1999. the ecb operates in a multilingual and multicultural environment. we have to address a significant number of audiences in each culture, the general public, opinion leaders, social partners, financial markets and, of course, the media as our partners who are key in the process of transmission of our messages to the audiences. these groups have different expectations with regard to the quantity and nature of our communications. for our communication policy to be effective, we have to make sure that our messages are transmitted in a consistent and timely manner throughout the euro area, and that there is an equal treatment of media across countries. in the presence of 23 official languages in the european union and 13 official languages in the euro area, it is very important to ensure that the very same message is conveyed to citizens in all countries, and that appropriate translations are made. in addition to providing these translations of the ecb ’ s official communications in all languages spoken by the euro area countries, a number of channels are used to ensure full respect of the single voice principle. the eurosystem - wide external communication activities of the national central banks are coordinated by the ecb. due consideration has been given to the different cultures of communication existing in the euro area. as expected, the very diverse european national media are playing a key role in the transmission of the information to the various audiences of the ecb. experience so far shows that the approach works well and that the media have contributed to a homogeneous understanding of the role and tasks of the ecb. 4 as the “ porte - parole ” of the ecb and its governing council, i think we have shown our capacity to communicate in unison with a high level of team spirit in interaction with a highly sophisticated and complex media network dealing with 320 million european citizens speaking 13 languages. it must be underlined that the european central bank decided from the very beginning to embark on a bold concept of transparency. on 1st january 1999, at the moment of the start of the euro, the state of the art of central banking was, not to say anything immediately after each decision on monetary policy, let observers and markets guess what had been the reasoning of the central bank and publish five or six weeks afterwards, the reasons why the decision was made in the form of “ minutes of the decision - making college ”. we decided