particularly because – and this is a centrepiece of your policy and i think it is the main difficulty you face – the northern european countries, a number of countries there, have been quite clear about the vague attempts at euro area reform put forward by emmanuel macron. why not, but first of all your public finances have to be balanced? not only public finances. growth in france must become strong again, structural unemployment must fall and public finances must be rebalanced. this is what our partners expect, and they ’ re right, it ’ s in our interest. 2 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches and so there can be no far - reaching reform of the euro area as long as france has these imbalances in its public finances? this has long been the case. the lack of reforms or their hesitant nature in france has long been an obstacle to the reform of the euro area. and french politicians are partly responsible. this obstacle is being removed as there is a reform momentum and a downward dynamic in the deficit. and therefore, the barriers are now increasingly in the euro area and take the form of a state of mind which keeps on wanting to set the north and south of the euro area against each other. there is a form of political fragmentation of the euro area which persists, even as the economic fragmentation is declining. it ’ s in the heads of euro area politicians who tend to regard themselves as being from the north, the south, although these distinctions make no sense in that we are all in the same boat. but how come it doesn ’ t make sense? these distinctions are real. austerity is in the north now ; it ’ s much weaker in the south. it is a reality and moreover you can see it in the data. no, i don ’ t agree with you. consider how spain, a southern country, has reformed its labour market. the north believes that if the south is pulling through now, it ’ s because of the efforts the north has made, and it is having a training effect... say that to spanish, portuguese and greek workers and employees. tell them that if they are pulling through it ’ s thanks to the efforts of the north. it ’ s thanks to their own efforts, which were very difficult. so there has been a reform movement that in some instances has not been completed, but which has been very painful for the countries of southern europe, in the countries that were in crisis, and now we have to

would not last forever. we have not yet discussed the when and how of its termination. but it ’ s understood, of course, that this is the direction in which things are going. what has not been discussed by the governing council, however, is an increase in interest rates. it is very clear to us that short - term interest rates those the ecb controls, will remain at very low levels, well beyond the horizon of our asset purchases. in other words, when reuters says that the teams at the european central bank presented to the governing council a scenario envisaging an increase in the rates in mid - 2019, it ’ s a scenario that you are telling us you are ruling out? this is what the markets are forecasting ; the ecb ’ s teams have bloomberg screens like everybody else. but the governing council has never discussed this. bloomberg or reuters screens … let ’ s respect the competition! anyway, i ’ m looking at the very latest indicators on our economic activity. manufacturing in january was clearly declining in france, two months of slight pressure in germany, with the mid - february pmi data also falling back a bit. aren ’ t we levelling off now? we have finished accelerating and in fact the risk is that growth will fall back … 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches no, i don ’ t think that it ’ s worth being frightened by a few indicators. growth is strong. there is a kind of stabilisation of the growth rate, when we talk about what ’ s called the “ second derivative ” rather than growth itself. maybe there ’ s a stabilisation. in a way, that strengthens the belief that there have to be structural measures which will take over from monetary policy. of course, that is the only possible direction. you have described your policy as “ giving time ” to all the governments to attempt reforms. has france now taken the right road, the right direction? yes, but it ’ s not the job of the ecb to give lessons to or to go into detail about what this or that government must do, because we don ’ t do politics, that ’ s not for us. we have a mandate which is very simple, which is to bring inflation in the euro area back towards 2 %. and we ’ re making very good progress towards that, but we ’ re not quite there yet. then, growth drivers are needed, growth in investment, in consumption, to take over from monetary policy