hitting the world economy and the importance of the ecb to respond to those shocks. looking at the world economy now, how big a risk is this trade war? so i think it is important to recognise that domestically the european economy has many positives. by the way the trade war does not extend to the single market, most trade in the european union, most trade for finland, a lot of that is going to be with the other members of the european union, which has no trade war. but unfortunately the trade war, the trade discussion between china and the united states does carry risks for the european economy and many firms here in finland sell to asia, to america, many firms across europe, so the quicker this trade dispute is settled the better for the european economy. 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches if we take another risk – brexit – how do you see that? again we have a situation now where there is a lot of uncertainty. either we will have a brexit that is negotiated or we have a no - deal brexit or there are other scenarios. so i think in the coming weeks and months we ’ ll get some answers, this cannot go on forever. i think everyone is indicating we need to come to a conclusion and once that conclusion is reached – especially if there is a reasonable negotiation, a reasonable outcome – then uncertainty will be reduced and that can be good news. on the other hand if it ’ s a no - deal brexit that will cause more disruption. and your favourite deal is? well again it ’ s up to the politicians. as for the ecb we will just respond to whatever happens. it ’ s up to the political leaders of the united kingdom to finalise brexit. in finland we always compare ourselves to sweden. when this first crisis hit sweden they kept doing well and finland not so well, and then comes this question of if it has been a good idea at all to be a member of economic and monetary union. how do you see this? so i ’ m a very big fan of the euro. i think it ’ s pretty important to recognise that without the ecb the crisis we had would have been worse. imagine the crisis of those years without a powerful shared central bank. if we had had 19 separate currencies during the crisis the outcome would have been worse. especially for small countries, the euro provides a lot of stability. i think increasingly as you know in the surveys the

now present our assessment of the global economy. global economic growth was weaker than expected in the first quarter of 2015, and this development had a detrimental impact on world trade. in the us, gdp declined slightly, partly due to special factors. moreover, the strong us dollar weighed on exports. in the euro area, however, the economy continued to pick up, supported by persistent euro weakness and improved lending conditions. in contrast to the previous quarter, all of the large member states contributed to growth. italy reported gdp growth for the first time since entering a multi - year recession. in japan, too, the economy gained momentum. in the emerging economies, performance remained uneven, while growth continued to cool in china. the global economy is expected to gather pace again, reinforced by expansionary monetary policy around the world and ongoing low oil prices. for instance, after a disappointing first bis central bankers ’ speeches quarter, the two large economies, the us and china, are starting to show signs of improvement. nonetheless, uncertainty about the future development of the global economy remains high. various risks – first and foremost the difficult financial situation in greece and geopolitical tensions – could jeopardise the recovery. swiss economic outlook according to initial estimates, switzerland ’ s real gdp declined slightly in the first quarter. as expected, goods exports suffered from the strong swiss franc appreciation, but also from a downturn in global trade. domestic demand, by contrast, developed robustly. having said this, the situation varies considerably from one industry to another. profit margins are under significant pressure in several sectors, and this is forcing companies to take steps to reduce production costs and raise efficiency. against this backdrop, unemployment has increased slightly on a seasonally adjusted basis. over the coming months, the global economic recovery is likely to lead to a gradual upturn in demand for swiss products ; this will cushion the impact of the exchange rate shock somewhat. as the global economy gathers momentum, we expect switzerland to return to positive growth in the second half of the year. the snb continues to anticipate growth of just under 1 % for 2015 as a whole. monetary and financial conditions allow me to move on now to monetary and financial conditions. since the discontinuation of the minimum exchange rate, inflation has moved well into negative territory. this is chiefly attributable to imported goods prices, which in may were down roughly 5 % year - on - year, mainly due to the fall in oil prices. domestic inflation