because there has been a lot of work. but have companies actually prepared for a plan b? if there is a no - deal brexit, what would it mean actually for growth in europe? you say : systemically, we ’ re okay … systemically we are okay. for the functioning of the financial sector, which is a lot in london, as we know, i think most of the players are well prepared now. do you worry about a big shock, though, to pmis, to gdp if there is a no - deal brexit? that would be a big shock to the uk economy. how much will it ripple around? we don ’ t know yet, but there would be an impact, of course. given this environment, can the ecb hike rates this year? as i said, we are monitoring the data. we have this rate guidance : we say we are not going to move before through the summer. we could change it, we could extend it. the market sends a 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches signal that it expects the rate hike to be much later than what we have said. it is part of the functioning of our rate guidance ; it shows that the rate guidance works well to anchor expectations. it ’ s too early to have the discussion because we are still ( in the process of ) understanding the nature of the shock. are you comfortable with how the market took the president ’ s comments yesterday? yes, we are. we ’ ve seen quite a lot of flattening of forward curves, even ahead of the governing council, and that, in itself, provides financial accommodation, so it ’ s part of the solution. we are comfortable with it. if the market were to overreact, if at some point we see market expectations which don ’ t fit the way we see the economy, then we would have to react. we would adjust our guidance ; and we may have to do it at some point. would that be after march? i don ’ t know. it ’ s a thought process and it ’ s very much data driven. what tools does the ecb actually, or could the ecb, deploy to counteract this slowdown? looking back, any time we ’ ve had to adjust to a new environment, we ’ ve done so, either using existing instruments or finding new instruments within our mandate, legally. we ’ ve been able to do it. what we have today in our tool

, a., webb, s. and neyapti, b. ( 1992 ), “ measuring the independence of central banks and its effect on policy outcomes ”, the world bank economic review, vol. 6, no 3, pp. 353 – 398 ; and berger, h., de haan, j. and eijffinger, s. ( 2001 ), “ central bank independence : an update of theory and evidence ”, journal of economic surveys, vol. 15, no 1, pp. 3 - 40. 4 see, for example, tucker, p. ( 2018 ), “ pristine and parsimonious policy : can central banks ever get back to it and why they should try ”, in hartmann, p., huang, h. and schoenmaker, d. ( eds. ), the changing fortunes of central banking, cambridge university press. see also summers, l. ( 2017 ), “ central bank independence ”, bank of england : ‘ independence – 20 years on ’ conference. 5 there appear to be almost no limits to the ideas for new fields of activity to entrust to central banks, as our long list of opinions on the subject shows. see, for example, the ecb opinions mentioned in the ecb ’ s 2018 convergence report, pp. 30 – 32. 6 mersch, y. ( 2017 ), “ central bank independence revisited ”, keynote address at the symposium on building the financial system of the 21st century : an agenda for europe and the united states. 7 there is a wide range of empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of unconventional measures 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches across a range of countries. see, for example : joyce, m., lasaosa, a., stevens, i. and tong, m. ( 2011 ), “ the financial market impact of quantitative easing in the united kingdom ”, international journal of central banking, vol. 7, no 3, pp. 113 – 161 ; wu j. and xia, f. ( 2016 ), “ measuring the macroeconomic impact of monetary policy at the zero lower bound ”, journal of money, credit and banking, vol. 48, no 2 - 3, pp. 253 – 291 ; and eser, f. and schwaab, b. ( 2016 ), “ evaluating the impact of unconventional monetary policy measures : empirical evidence from the ecb ’ s securities markets programme ”, journal of