is titled “ ce qu ’ on voit et ce qu ’ on ne voit pas ”, “ what you see and what you don ’ t see ”. monetary policy works by trickling down first to the banks and the financial system and then on to the whole of the economy. so people see the direct impact – unemployed workers will see that we ’ re lifting stock prices, banks will see that we ’ re shrinking their interest margin. they don ’ t see the indirect impact – jobs being created, wages being lifted thanks to higher consumption and investment – and that ’ s what we have to do a better job of explaining. one of the big problems of the euro is that it hasn ’ t produced as much economic integration as you would have thought. how do you address that? that ’ s true. we need more integration and we need more convergence. which is why the budgetary instrument for convergence and competitiveness that has been agreed by the eurogroup is a useful step, although it should evolve over time to include counter cyclical features. what do you think of the involvement of the ecb in the troika that designed and imposed the greek bailout programmes? would you defend it as the right decision? the ecb ’ s involvement in the troika was a symptom of one of the many flaws in the eurozone as it was set up. being in the troika was not the right place for a central bank. but back in 2010, the institutional framework was highly deficient, and the only way to gather and aggregate the relevant expertise was to bring together the commission, the imf and the ecb. the ecb was asked to do it and did it as a service to european governments. i don ’ t think we could have escaped from playing that role and we played it in an honest and professional way. 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches now, the institutional framework has improved, we have a new arrangement emerging between the commission and the european stability mechanism, and ecb involvement is much less vital than it was in 2010. we ’ ve already scaled down our involvement ; for some time now in greece, we ’ ve been focusing on financial sector issues, where our expertise is clear, and on broad fiscal topics. we wouldn ’ t take a view on the structure of taxes, or on reforming public administration, or on social benefits, as we have done in the past. how do you feel about the political will for more

benoit cœure : interview in the financial times interview with mr benoit cœure, member of the executive board of the european central bank, in the financial times, conducted by ms claire jones on 12 june 2019, and published on 17 june 2019. * * * at the last ecb governing council in vilnius, there seemed to be some progress in coming up with solutions to face the risks to the outlook … … the governing council discussion in vilnius was about making sense of diverse signals from the economy and the financial markets. the eurozone economy is not doing so badly ; in fact services and construction are doing quite well. the concerns are really around the manufacturing sector, and the source of these concerns is mostly, if not entirely, to be found outside of the eurozone and may be temporary. the signals coming from the financial markets, however, are quite alarming. anything in particular that alarms you? the constellation of prices in the bond market paints a picture of the global economy which is very bleak. central banks should never ignore market signals. they shouldn ’ t follow them blindly either. i ’ m not saying this as a reason to be complacent, but we have to make sense of this divergence between market prices and economic data. our baseline staff projection for the euro area economy is not so bad. and that message is something that the governing council is broadly comfortable with. but the distribution of risks around this projection has broadened. risk has increased. and that required reassurance from the council that we ’ re ready to address these risks, should they materialise. so far we ’ re talking about contingency planning. but at some point during our next few meetings, we might very well be facing a situation where risks have materialised. and the question is not whether we have instruments ; we do have instruments. we can change our guidance. we can cut rates. we can restart qe. the question is which instrument, or combination of instruments, would be best suited to the circumstances. that discussion only started in vilnius ; we need to take it forward and reflect on the nature of the risks we ’ re facing. can you cut rates without tinkering with the way negative rates are applied to banks? all options come with costs and benefits, and we have to ponder them very carefully. none of this would deter us from acting. we have a clear mandate and will act on our mandate. so, if the conclusion were that cutting rates is the