s no point artificially setting the interests of different countries against each other, because we are all in the same boat … your policies have also weakened the banks, who have seen their margins shrink to the point that some of them are no longer concerned about charging for deposits. on the one hand, interest rates are not low because of the ecb. us lowering our “ key rates ” ( for example, the rate at which bank deposits held with the ecb are remunerated ) to very low or even negative levels means that there is a savings glut in the economy : the natural rate of interest has fallen due to weak growth, the ageing population and a sort of anxiety in the global economy leading to demand for very safe assets, like government bonds. but for monetary policy to work and stimulate the economy, the interest rates set by the central bank have to be below this equilibrium rate. if one wants to return to a situation in which savings generate returns and conditions are supportive for the financial sector, criticising the central bank achieves nothing. action needs to be taken on the fundamentals to boost returns on capital, which would naturally lead to interest rates increasing, and the central bank could follow. on the other hand, it is true that the fact that the yield curve is flat, in other words that interest rates are low across the maturity spectrum, is weighing on the financial sector. indeed, the difference between the long - term performance of savings and the short - term cost of funding is currently almost zero. but what is weighing even more heavily on the profitability of european banks is that they have a cost base that is much higher than that of banks in the united states, japan, the united kingdom and scandinavia, and that, in certain countries, they have nonperforming loans on their balance sheet that no longer yield a return. and finally, there are too many banks in europe and consolidation has not started. so, we need fewer banks in the euro area? the banking union hasn ’ t yet enabled consolidation within the sector. we need to see crossborder m & a activity in the banking sector, and we also need to overcome a number of obstacles to banking activity. but the banking union has played a useful role in stabilising a sector that is now much more robust than it was in 2012, since the ecb has taken on the role of banking supervisor and has strengthened capital and liquidity requirements. it is important to recognise that one of the

do whatever it takes to preserve the euro, and the creation of 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches outright monetary transactions, which were the concrete manifestation of that commitment and made it possible to maintain the integrity of the euro area. then there was the episode with greece, which was of course very controversial, as can be seen in the costa gavras film “ adults in the room ”. but when the greek government was close to bankruptcy, we ensured the continued financing of the greek economy and of greek banks – which had lost access to the markets and to their own savers following a capital flight – while respecting the political will of euro area governments that the assistance to greece should be conditional. our actions ultimately allowed greece to remain in the euro. there were those who wanted to make the ecb responsible for greece leaving the euro area, but we resisted that! and the third thing i ’ m proud of is the quantitative easing we launched in 2015, which averted the risk of deflation. any regrets? we probably started quantitative easing ( qe ) a little too late, though i ’ m not blaming anyone. it was a major innovation which required an immense effort of persuasion within the governing council. for example, we had long discussions as to who would bear the risk of these asset purchases and we finally decided that 80 % would be borne by the national central banks on their balance sheets and not by the ecb. the idea was to prevent qe, a massive purchase of public securities – we now hold almost a third of total european debt, equivalent to 20 % of euro area gdp – from being a way of ushering in a fiscal union through the back door against the wishes of member states. we also underestimated the impact that the policy of fiscal austerity would have on activity ; this policy was enshrined in the treaty on stability, coordination and governance and was necessary at the time in order to provide stability to the financial markets. but this would have required a more accommodative monetary policy, as recommended by the imf, going as far as qe, which should have been running from 2010 rather than from 2015. finally, we may have sat on the fence for slightly too long with regard to climate change, even if that is not our core task. other central banks, such as the bank of england, became aware of it earlier than we did. for one, climate change needs to be integrated into financial sector supervision, taking into