treaty. it would have been a bis central bankers ’ speeches consequence of the central bank renouncing to apply strictly and in full the provisions of the treaty. the ecb ’ s support for greece is based on its statute but also on the assumption in the treaty that the status of each member of the euro area remains inviolate. indeed, the same conviction and the same independence from the political process led us in the summer of 2012, when the sovereign debt crisis endangered the integrity of the euro area, to resolutely declare our determination to defend the single currency. to sum up, the balance we achieved with our interventions during the greek crisis was fully within our mandate ; it respected the political commitment to the single currency contained in the treaty, but at the same time we implemented that commitment within the limits of our statute. conclusion the ecb ’ s response to the exceptional challenges posed by the crisis has preserved the integrity of money in the euro area. monetary stability is however only one necessary condition for the prosperity of the economy. indeed, so much attention has been paid to our commitment to a sound currency that, to paraphrase galbraith, little thought has been given to other things. we must now look ahead, and move from stability towards prosperity. we need a new pact that prevents the re - emergence of the type of challenges we have addressed, and that above all strengthens the constitutional architecture of the euro area. this is not a new conclusion. it was already reached in the summer of 2012, when the european council mandated the president of the council, the commission, the eurogroup and me, and subsequently the president of the european parliament, to outline a credible path that completes our monetary union and makes it “ more perfect ”. since then, we have made various proposals, all of which go in that direction. i hope that what i have said to you today will convince you of the urgency of this reflection, of the need to turn it without undue delay into an institutional process able to secure concrete results, in line with a clear calendar for action. this is a long and complex journey which can only be based on the strong determination of the member states. bis central bankers ’ speeches

all on supporting bank lending to the real economy with longer - term refinancing operations. unlike the long - term operations we launched in 2009 and again between the end of 2011 and early 2012, these targeted refinancing operations are, for the most part, conditional. in other words, any bank, starting in march this year, can have a long - term loan from the ecb at a very advantageous rate only if its lending to businesses and households increases at a higher pace than in the recent past. the banks have, to date borrowed an amount totalling just under €400 billion. this has been critical in stimulating the pick - up in bank lending that we are currently witnessing. later in 2014, however, the inflation outlook worsened due to the steep fall in oil prices. very low oil - driven inflation is not necessarily problematic for the central bank if that inflation is perceived as being temporary and if, as a consequence, inflation expectations remain unchanged. but what we saw was that inflation expectations were tending, at all horizons, to become dis - anchored from our price stability objective and increasingly affected by the low level of current inflation. this called for monetary policy to shift up a gear, for two reasons. first, when policy interest rates are at zero – as was the case by that time – falling inflation expectations imply a rise in real interest rates, which amounts to a tightening of our monetary policy stance. if left unaddressed, that could have started a further fall in inflation expectations and a sharper tightening of the monetary stance. second, though oil price movements can permanently affect the price level, they should not exert a longer - term influence on the inflation rate. so the fact that we were seeing longerterm inflation expectations responding to low oil prices was a source of concern. it suggested, perhaps, that people believed the central bank ’ s scope of action to achieve its objective was in some way constrained, and hence where inflation would settle was uncertain. it was in that context that we launched our asset purchase programme in september last year, and expanded it in january this year to include public sector securities. the transition from a monetary policy based on adjusting short - term interest rates to one carried out through asset purchases constituted, in reality, a natural evolution. but it nonetheless helped dispel some misunderstandings about the meaning and boundaries of the ecb ’ s mandate, and confirmed the governing council ’ s independence of judgement and of decision - making from the political views