##b president mario draghi has pointed out the divided opinions on the current package of measures within the governing council. i consider it not just normal, but absolutely imperative, for far - reaching measures such as government bond purchases to spark intense debate. the austrian philosopher karl popper once stated that only critical discourse could give us the maturity to consider an idea from more and more angles and to evaluate it properly. 5 and to my mind, the conditions under which the eurosystem has been buying government bonds since 2015, for example, illustrate how this kind of debate can in fact improve our decisions. during our discussions back then, we drew boundaries in the purchase programme to mitigate the risk of monetary policy being harnessed to fiscal policy. with that in mind, i hope that the decisions that have now been made do not call into question these restrictions, for example with regard to upper limits relative to a government ’ s total debt or relative to the volume of a single issue, or the principle that purchases are distributed across member states ’ bonds according to the ecb ’ s capital key and not according to the amount of government debt. after all, nothing has changed when it comes to the validity and importance of 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches the limits on government bond purchases decided by the governing council of the ecb. particularly in a monetary union where member states enjoy fiscal autonomy, it is vital to ensure that the line between monetary and fiscal policy does not become blurred. the central banks ’ response to the crisis also posed temptations with regard to the eurosystem, which it should not pursue. to quote ewald nowotny : “ a lot is being asked of the ecb [ … ]. some of it we can ’ t deliver – because our framework is different to that of the us fed. ” 6 this is of course all the more true of demands such as those espoused by modern monetary theory : transferring the objective of price stability to fiscal policy and making monetary policy, in the role of an agent, subordinate to fiscal policy would be doing a disservice to society. even though economists in fact disagree about many issues, the notion that independent central banks focused on price stability are good for a society ’ s prosperity is backed up by theory and empirical evidence and enjoys broad consensus. this is also illustrated by the oenb ’ s long history. at its anniversary three years ago, ewald nowotny stated : “ yet, irrespective of the

us trading times. the new enterprise is based in frankfurt. the german - chinese exchange will operate using the established and globally available infrastructure of the deutsche borse group. the three joint venture partners intentionally chose frankfurt as the financial platform from which to offer their service in a european regulatory environment and in the european and american time zones. the money flows resulting from securities settlement are to be channelled through the clearing infrastructure provided in frankfurt. in my view, china ’ s real economic development and the launch of the china europe international exchange will give rise to additional volumes of rmb payments. the german banking industry will decide which channels shall be used to clear rmb payments. nevertheless, i would wish that the german banking community will support the german financial market to become an rmb hub. this could be done by processing rmb transactions via the rmb clearing bank in frankfurt. potential prospects the bundesbank operates the target2 system together with the french and italian central banks, while the eurosystem is currently looking at strategically enhancing its market infrastructures. for example the eurosystem discusses to offer multicurrency services in a future target2 system. for such a new service the renminbi and its processing would be a candidate. a connection on infrastructure level between the chinese payments traffic and an enhanced target2 system – we can call it target3 – would also an option. however this will only be possible, if both systems use a harmonised iso 20022 standard. this is not yet the case today. all in all the surrounding will remain interesting and exciting. many new ideas and visions can still be developed. bis central bankers ’ speeches