bank had plenty of time to my predecessors on the board of de nederlandsche bank had plenty of time to choose otherwise. they did not, however. this is how the history of de nederlandsche bank begins, the institution whose mandate is to ensure that people can have confidence in the financial system. a history that the current board is thoroughly and painfully aware of, thanks to the independent study conducted by researchers at leiden university. a history that provides the current board with a clear mandate. a history that inextricably links my fellow board members and me to boards of past generations. the current board, however, has resolutely decided to take a different path. on behalf of de nederlandsche bank, i acknowledge that many of my predecessors viewed people as nothing more than merchandise. that many defended the existence of slavery and the prolongation of slavery. and that many later ignored the ramifications of slavery for a long, long time. on behalf of de nederlandsche bank, i also acknowledge our involvement as an institution. some of the money that served as dnb ’ s start - up capital was earned from slavery. dnb accepted products from the plantations, such as coffee and sugar, as collateral for a loan. and when slavery was abolished, dnb paid compensation to plantation owners on the instruction of the ministry of colonies, including to board members of de nederlandsche bank. on behalf of de nederlandsche bank, the current executive board today apologises for these reprehensible facts. we offer our sincere apologies to all descendants of enslaved people in the netherlands, in suriname, in bonaire, sint eustatius and saba, in aruba, curacao and sint maarten. we apologise to all those who, because of the personal choices of my predecessors, were reduced to the colour of their skin. to an amount. to a commodity listed in a ledger. we apologise to everyone who still bears the consequences of those choices even today. over the past few months, i have heard many personal stories – stories of suffering, but also of resistance and struggle. i heard painful stories. i learned a great deal. and it hurt. what i heard brought the suffering of the past and present very close to home. and at the same time, that suffering remained terribly, disconcertingly distant for someone who grew up in the far north of the country. the conversations i

tilting the policy mix in the euro area keynote speech by klaas knot, finanzmarktklausur wirtschaftsrat, berlin thursday 26 january 2017 ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to speak at this event of your wirtschaftsrat. i would like to give you a central banker ’ s perspective on the appropriate policy mix in the euro area. i ’ m referring to the range of measures that policymakers take to influence economic growth. and as you no doubt will know, we central bankers have played a large role in helping the economy stabilize and recover from the crisis. introduction – tilting the policy mix since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the euro area economy has had to cope with a series of negative shocks. the private sector has been in a deleveraging mode for nearly a decade. and also many governments had to make large fiscal adjustments to ensure their debts remained sustainable. these deleveraging efforts have been holding back growth, making this recovery one of the slowest in recent history. as a result, over the past decade, economic policy mainly involved crisis management and demand stimulus. in part because of the limited fiscal space in many euro area countries, monetary policy has done the bulk of the work. even after policy rates had been brought to zero, central banks have shown to be creative in finding ways to fight the cyclical problems the crisis had left behind. now, gradually, the economic outlook is more promising. 2016 was an eventful year, with the brexit vote, the surprising outcome of the us election and the italian referendum. but not only did the recovery of the euro area economy turn out to be resilient to these shocks, it is even gaining some momentum and becoming more broadly based. the gradual firming up of the recovery allows us to refocus our attention to longerterm challenges. as the late, widely - respected hans tietmeyer stated back in 1998 : “ die geldpolitik kann den anderen politikbereichen – weder der finanz - noch der sozial - und lohnpolitik – ihre aufgaben nicht abnehmen ”. it now becomes time to rebalance the policy mix away from demand stimulus through unprecedented monetary accommodation, towards measures aimed at improving the longer - term outlook. unprecedented monetary policy accommoda - tion to get where we are now, the eurosystem