mario draghi : ecb press conference – introductory statement introductory statement by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, and mr vitor constancio, vice - president of the european central bank, frankfurt am main, 8 november 2012. * * * ladies and gentlemen, the vice - president and i are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference. we will now report on the outcome of today ’ s meeting of the governing council. based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we decided to keep the key ecb interest rates unchanged. owing to high energy prices and increases in indirect taxes in some euro area countries, inflation rates are likely to remain above 2 % for the remainder of 2012. they are expected to fall below that level in the course of next year and to remain in line with price stability over the policy - relevant horizon. consistent with this picture, the underlying pace of monetary expansion continues to be subdued. inflation expectations for the euro area remain firmly anchored in line with our aim of maintaining inflation rates below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. economic activity in the euro area is expected to remain weak, although it continues to be supported by our monetary policy stance and financial market confidence has visibly improved on the back of our decisions as regards outright monetary transactions ( omts ). at the same time, the necessary process of balance sheet adjustment in large parts of the financial and non - financial sectors as well as high uncertainty continue to weigh on the economic outlook. it is essential for governments to support confidence by forcefully implementing the necessary steps to reduce both fiscal and structural imbalances and to proceed with financial sector restructuring. the governing council remains firmly committed to preserving the singleness of its monetary policy and to ensuring the proper transmission of the policy stance to the real economy throughout the euro area. as we said before, we are ready to undertake omts, which will help to avoid extreme scenarios, thereby clearly reducing concerns about the materialisation of destructive forces. let me now explain our assessment in greater detail, starting with the economic analysis. euro area real gdp contracted by 0. 2 %, quarter on quarter, in the second quarter of 2012, following flat growth in the previous quarter. as regards the second half of 2012, the available indicators continue to signal weak activity. while industrial production data showed some resilience in july / august, most recent survey evidence for the economy as a whole, extending into the fourth quarter, does not signal improvements towards the

that all point to a more global, and particularly more european, coordination of statistics. it is conceivable that over time the european statistical systems will develop in the direction of genuine systems with regional competence centres, coordinated by the european institutions. the mutual interdependence of statistics compilers would then increase, which in turn calls for a further strengthening of international statistical governance. in this regard, it may be mentioned that the ecb has subscribed to a set of universal core principles for international statistics. similarly, it may be worthwhile exploring an elaboration of the eurosystem mission statement in the field of statistics. good governance is particularly important for statistics that have a direct administrative and policy use in europe, such as the indicators for assessing the convergence of eu member states that do not yet belong to the euro area and the statistics underlying the excessive deficit procedure. while eurostat is responsible for these statistics, it can benefit, when deciding upon conceptual issues, from the considerable statistical expertise available at the ecb, the ncbs and the nsis, as brought together in the cmfb. in any case, the compilation of government finance statistics – and all other statistics for that matter – should not be subject to political considerations. the compilers of these statistics must act in full scientific independence, and the government must ensure that sufficient resources are made available for their task. at the same time, it is important to regularly review the cost / benefit ratio of existing statistics that were agreed upon many years ago. concluding remarks ladies and gentleman, credible euro area statistics lie at the heart of the ecb ’ s monetary policymaking. at the same time, these statistics are embedded in and affected by a globalising world. the key to meeting the challenges this poses lies with further enhanced international cooperation among statistics compilers. another key success factor is continuous cross - fertilisation between users and producers of statistics. an example of such cooperation in the near future will be the first release of integrated financial and non - financial euro area accounts for the institutional sectors, which will permit an even more comprehensive cross - checking of the economic and monetary pillars of the ecb ’ s monetary policy analysis. in addition, users and policy - makers should keep in mind that indispensable high - quality statistics unavoidably place some burden on business, including small and medium enterprises, although this burden can be minimised if statisticians obtain appropriate access to administrative data collected for other purposes.