monetary and fiscal policy, and they have made us the largest creditor of the euro area countries. this poses a threat to our independence. furthermore, if the capital markets are to encourage fiscal policymakers to embrace fiscal 3 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches prudence, it is vital that market mechanisms generally continue to function properly. i believe that changing the parameters – which is sometimes discussed rather carelessly, in my opinion – would have considerable negative repercussions for those mechanisms. a clear sense of scepticism is also apparent in the german federal constitutional court ’ s decision to refer the government bond purchase programme to the european court of justice. 3 conclusion / outlook so let me recap my main points on the pspp. first, the eurosystem has been successful in smoothly implementing the pspp. purchases will be recalibrated as a result of improvements in the economic and monetary environment in the euro area. second, temporary deviations from the capital key are not a discretionary policy choice to support individual countries. they have purely technical reasons and reflect the fact that we want to be as market - neutral as possible in our purchases. third, smooth implementation of the pspp does not mean rewriting the rules whenever compliance with the rules would impose any kind of restrictions. abandoning the capital key as reference value or increasing the limit for issue shares and issuers would take monetary policymakers deep into the realm of fiscal policy – in my view, too deep. ladies and gentlemen, in the last 15 minutes the focus was on the pspp. but let ’ s not get too carried away with this instrument. i would warmly recommend that you take the trouble to broaden your view to the other decisions by the ecb governing council, including private sector purchases, reinvestments, forward guidance, targeted longer - term refinancing operations and, of course, key rates. on aggregate, the monetary policy stance of the eurosystem will remain highly accommodative for a while yet. 4 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches

been purchased in german debt securities, 356 billion euro in french debt securities and 310 billion euro in italian debt securities. the background is that the eurosystem is guided by a capital key allocation in terms of pspp book value amounts per country. by allocating purchases to each country in accordance with the ecb capital key, the eurosystem seeks to avoid the moral hazard that could arise as a result of purchasing a disproportionately large amount of bonds issued by highly indebted governments. if it is not possible to purchase the envisaged amount of bonds in a given country, the relevant national central bank conducts so - called substitute purchases, consisting of bonds issued by 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches international organisations and multilateral development banks located in the euro area. this is to ensure a smooth implementation of the national central banks ’ share of purchases throughout the life of the app. to this end, the governing council of the ecb has also adjusted the parameters of the pspp along the way. these adjustments include decisions to increase issue share limits from 25 per cent to 33 per cent ( september 2015 ) include bonds issued by regional and local governments located in the euro area ( december 2015 ) increase the issuer and issue share limit for eu supranational bonds from 33 per cent to 50 per cent ( march 2016 ) broaden the maturity range by decreasing the minimum remaining maturity for eligible securities from two years to one year ( december 2016 ) permit to the extent necessary purchases of securities with a yield to maturity below the ecb ’ s deposit facility rate ( december 2016 ) in october, the app was reviewed again by the ecb governing council in the regular crosscheck of economic and monetary conditions in the euro area. as a result, the governing council decided to recalibrate the app. from january 2018, net asset purchases under the app will be reduced from a monthly pace of 60 billion euro to 30 billion euro. the ecb governing council pointed out that this recalibration is due to improvements in the economic and monetary environment in the euro area. as far as alleged shortages are concerned, let me emphasise that, since the inception of the pspp, the bundesbank has never faced and does not face difficulties in purchasing the intended amounts of german government bonds on the secondary markets. 2. 2 minimising negative side - effects on market functioning but there is more to a smooth implementation of the pspp than just achieving the intended monthly