crr regulatory framework. given, above all, the particularities of the business models of german development banks and their public mandate, i fail to see why these institutions should be subject to complex international regulation. in this respect, we at the bundesbank strongly support the concept of a criteria - based exemption rule for development banks. we are also calling for institutions with total assets in excess of €30 billion to be covered by an exemption. in doing so, we are going beyond the european commission ’ s draft proposal. the report published by the european parliament, too, follows a similar train of thought under certain conditions – which means that it ’ s now up to the german negotiators in brussels to set the right course. so what i am saying is that when implementing the basel iii reforms in the eu, the rules must be applied in full to internationally active banks. but when it comes to smaller banks that are not internationally active, first, we should focus specifically on reducing the operational burden by scaling back or removing inappropriately complex rules. and second, we need to check whether it would be possible to exempt entire groups of institutions such as development banks from the european regulation. 6. conclusion ladies and gentlemen, the euro area is experiencing impressive economic growth again for the first time in a decade. a differentiated banking system is a key pillar of the economy – and i am convinced that this diversity makes our economy more dynamic and more resilient. and we must be careful not to burden this differentiated banking system unnecessarily through regulation. for us, as supervisors and regulators, this means addressing parts of the banking regulation that have become overly complex. we should not place any disproportionate obstacles in the way of small institutions and savings banks. it is now up to the european parliament, the eu council of ministers and the european 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches commission to pave the way for substantial improvements. together with my banking supervision colleagues at the bundesbank, i will continue to strive for greater proportionality in banking supervision. the current developments in brussels give us reason to be optimistic. 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches

of public finances, the financial system or the economy ’ s competitiveness. it showed that central banks can quickly be pushed to offer a quick fix by providing cheap money. now, as then, european monetary policymakers are facing unrelenting pressure, and central banks are being expected to perform a multitude of different tasks. before i delve into the topic of reforming the regulatory framework, i would therefore like to say a few words on the eurosystem ’ s monetary policy. european monetary policy has been in a state of emergency for the past seven years. in order to prevent the global financial and economic crisis from escalating, the ecb governing council began drastically reducing the key ecb interest rates from the autumn of 2008 onwards and also agreed on a number of far - reaching unconventional measures. these measures aimed at shoring up liquidity levels at banks which had lost confidence in each other. a further objective was to uphold the supply of credit to the economy. with the onset of the euro - area sovereign debt crisis in 2010, european monetary policymakers came under even greater pressure to act, and the focus increasingly shifted to the eurosystem central banks. one major reason for this was that the political coordination processes within europe are sometimes cumbersome and central banks have powerful instruments at their disposal to prevent the crisis in the euro area from coming to a head. some would even say that it was ultimately the eurosystem which kept monetary union alive. this should, however, have primarily been the task of politicians. at the end of the day, the instruments used by central banks are more like a painkiller, ie they temporarily make the problems more bearable, but they do not tackle the root causes and are even associated with risks and side - effects. you could say the central banks played a “ sweeper ” role, and they did so by implementing measures that took them to the outer bounds of their mandate. and by that, i particularly mean the targeted purchases of government bonds of individual crisis - stricken countries. bis central bankers ’ speeches given that the profits and losses on this paper are distributed among the eurosystem central banks, the purchases are, in economic terms, nothing more than the introduction of euro bonds through the back door. ladies and gentlemen the eurosystem ’ s mandate is to ensure price stability within the euro area. it is not to ensure the solvency of the individual member states through the “ communitisation ” of such liability risks via the central