willem f duisenberg : testimony before the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the european parliament introductory statement by dr willem f duisenberg, president of the european central bank, brussels, 21 may 2002 * * * i take pleasure in appearing before you today to continue our regular exchanges of views and to report to you on the ecb ’ s assessment of economic and monetary developments and on the decisions taken by the governing council. moreover, i should like to take the opportunity to address in my introductory remarks two issues related to the growth potential of the euro area economy and to wage developments, which were raised, among other matters, in a letter that you, madam chairman, sent me recently as a follow - up to the presentation of the ecb annual report to this committee by the vice - president of the ecb. economic and monetary developments the evidence which has become available since my last testimony to your committee on 23 january 2002 has indeed made us confident that a recovery is under way in the euro area. at the same time, recent developments in consumer price inflation in the euro area have been less favourable than we expected, mainly due to specific and partly temporary factors. related to this, the outlook for price stability appears to be somewhat less favourable now than it was at the turn of the year. however, there are still uncertainties on the strength of the economic recovery and they, in turn, imply the existence of uncertainties regarding the inflation outlook - and these uncertainties have not diminished since the governing council meeting on 2 may. let me now elaborate on this assessment of the economic outlook for the euro area. starting with the analysis under the first pillar of the ecb ’ s monetary policy strategy, the annual growth rate of m3 remained high in the first quarter of 2002. the high annual growth rate still reflects the portfolio shifts to liquid positions which occurred last autumn, when the economic and financial environment was characterised by high uncertainty, and euro area investors showed a particularly marked preference for liquid holdings. at the same time, we saw some moderation in the short - term dynamics of m3 in early 2002. however, m3 growth has only recently started to decline and, for the time being, the reversal of the earlier liquidity build - up is proceeding only slowly. the persistence of excess liquidity could become a risk to price stability, particularly at a time of economic recovery in the euro area. in addition, it should also be considered that while the annual rate of growth of loans to the private sector

sabine lautenschlager : interview with deutschlandfunk interview by ms sabine lautenschlager, member of the executive board of the european central bank, with deutschlandfunk, conducted on 4 september and aired on 7 september 2014. * * * ms lautenschlager, you are a member of the six - person executive board of the european central bank. in a few weeks, the ecb will be entering what is practically a new era. you are taking over supervision of the most important european banks. that is a balance sheet of more than €21 trillion. the question is, therefore, are you up to the task? are you ready for take - off? we are ready to start, or we will be ready to start in november. we have taken on quite an astonishing number of highly qualified staff. so far, there are 28 nations represented here. so, how many people will be working there in the new supervision function? we will have 800 supervisors plus an additional 250 staff who will provide the support. these are colleagues carrying out legal work and colleagues involved in it or recruitment. altogether, that makes 1, 050. and how easy was it to fill the positions? did you have a lot of applications? almost 20, 000, i heard last week. that ’ s something i ’ m very proud of. we appear to be very attractive – which i can understand. it ’ s a great job. and we had applications not only from bank supervisors from lots of countries, but also from employees in accountancy firms, management consultants and a very large number of bankers. how does it work in practice? how are the banks monitored? are banks scrutinised by teams of people from various countries, or how do you do it? it depends to some extent on what kind of bank it is. it is divided into two parts. we will directly supervise 120 credit institutions in the euro area, for which there are these mixed teams of supervisors. altogether, that represents 80 % of the aggregated balance sheet of the banks in the euro area. that ’ s already quite a lot. and then there is the indirect supervision. that is around 3, 500 credit institutions, representing the remaining 20 % of the aggregated balance sheet of the banks in the euro area. and we will set the supervisory standards for this, so that there is uniform supervision. however, the supervision itself – the decisions etc. – will be carried out by the national supervisory authorities