: first, related to the liquidity of financial markets, and second because they are affected by the evolution of the risk premium over time. moreover, while financial market expectations provide information on future financing conditions, the evolution of prices and wages depends more deeply and directly on what household and firms expect regarding future growth and inflation. consequently, existing surveys among firms and households can provide very useful and valuable information on expectations. better monitoring the general public's inflation expectations is not an easy task since inflation expectations of firms or consumers are not directly observable. for the moment, reliable data on consumers or firms ’ inflation expectations are quite scarce in the euro area whereas in other jurisdictions expectation surveys have been developed quite extensively – famous and recent examples include the new york fed survey, the tankan survey in japan or the different surveys developed by the bank of england. in this respect, the new bundesbank household survey contributes to fill the gap and it is also an excellent example of the recent efforts made by central banks to collect new and better information on expectations of economic agents. ii. communication of central banks should also target households for the moment, our most reliable information on the general public ’ s inflation expectations in the euro area comes from the consumer survey conducted by the european commission. when comparing the different sources of inflation expectations with consumer survey expectations, we can see that they deliver a very different message on the level of inflation expectations, compared to financial markets. european households perceive an inflation rate close to 10 % whereas their inflation expectations are closer to 5 %. one implication of such a result is that we need to improve a lot our communication to a more general audience. another conclusion we can draw is that, if households are not well aware of the level of inflation, they perceive quite well the overall evolution of inflation over time ( figure 2 ). as already pointed out by benoit coeure 1, while households are not professional forecasters, their inflation expectations usually correlate very well with the ones anticipated by professional forecasters for the same forecast horizon ( one year ) ( figure 3 ). however, we can see over the recent period, a divergence between consumer expectations and financial markets indicators. b. coeure ( 2019 ). inflation expectations and the conduct of monetary policy, speech at an event organised by the safe policy center, 11 july 2019 since it could strongly affect the future path of inflation, such a pattern raises several important questions : will this divergence persist over time or is it very temporary?

explaining the rationale that underpins the governing council ’ s decisions. lastly, decentralisation : as the subsidiarity principle underlies the whole european construction, decentralisation is a major principle of the architecture of the eurosystem. the eurosystem is a team whose members work in close co - operation, and the team spirit is really strong and fruitful. monetary policy decisions are taken, at the centre, by the governing council, and are implemented by the national central banks in a closely co - ordinated way. ecb governance on 3 february 2003, the governing council of the ecb unanimously approved a recommendation for a european council decision, which is aimed at adjusting the voting modalities in the governing council in an enlarged euro area, in accordance with article 10. 6 of the statutes introduced by the treaty of nice. this adjustment became necessary so as to maintain the efficiency and timeliness of the governing council ’ s decision - making process. the recommendation has been submitted to the eu council. we hope that it will eventually be endorsed by the heads of state and government after both the european parliament and the european commission, which has already delivered its opinion, have been consulted. as soon as the number of members of the governing council will reach 22, the total number of voting rights will be limited to 21. the six executive board members will have a permanent voting right and the ncb governors will share the remaining 15 voting rights which will rotate among them according to pre - established rules. to ensure that all decisions taken by the governing council are representative of the euro area economy as a whole, governors will be allocated to groups which differ with respect to the frequency with which their members will have voting rights. the allocation of governors to groups will therefore be done in accordance with a ranking of their respective ncb ’ s, reflecting mainly the size of economies and of financial sectors. all in all, this recent recommandation from the governing council is testimony to its ability to smoothly adapt its internal governance to the challenges posed by enlargement. strategy of the single monetary policy the maastricht treaty clearly defines the ultimate objective of the single monetary policy, that is to say maintaining price stability. however, for attaining this goal, it is essential to clearly define price stability : we define it as a year - on - year increase in the overall harmonised index of consumer prices ( hicp ) of below 2 % in the whole euro area. bearing in mind this