monetary policy, and overall benefit economic growth. we look forward to the detailed elements that the commission will announce in the course of 2015 and i have no doubt that the european parliament as co - legislator will again play a decisive role in this regard. the collateral framework of the eurosystem let me now say a few words on the second topic you have chosen, our collateral framework. since the very beginning, the eurosystem collateral framework had been designed to achieve two goals at the same time : first to protect the eurosystem from incurring losses, as it is explicitly required by the statute of the ecb / escb ; second to ensure that eurosystem credit operations can be carried out smoothly by making sufficient collateral available. the past and recent experience has shown that such a dual set - up of the eurosystem collateral framework has been indeed very effective. so far, the eurosystem has never had to recognise a loss stemming from the eurosystem credit operations. in the few cases where counterparties have defaulted, for instance in the case of a subsidiary of lehman brothers, the eurosystem was able to fully cover its exposure by seizing the posted collateral. at the same time, the collateral framework ensured that banks were able to obtain sufficient amounts of central bank liquidity throughout the crisis. this became most visible in the context of the two very long term refinancing operations that the ecb conducted in 2011 and 2012. in these operations banks obtained collateralised central bank liquidity in the order of eur 524 billion within only 10 weeks. this basic set - up of the collateral framework has remained the same since the beginning of monetary union ; the three constituent parts of the eurosystem collateral framework, i. e. ( i ) the counterparty framework, ( ii ) the basic eligibility criteria for underlying assets and ( iii ) the risk control measures, have remained largely unchanged. the eurosystem maintains a broad counterparty framework and its eligibility criteria are still based on the same principles as at the beginning. this shows that the design of the eurosystem collateral framework is in general very robust. however, some changes were necessary to guarantee a smooth implementation of monetary policy at times of financial market stress that led to a general reduction in access to market funding. a collateral framework must never act in a pro - cyclical manner : restricting banks ’ access to liquidity in a crisis – for instance, by introducing more restrictive criteria for collateral – might pose a risk

consistent common strategy to bring our economies back on track. monetary policy alone will not be able to achieve this. this is why there is an urgent need to agree on concrete short - term commitments for structural reforms in the member states, on a consequent application of the stability and growth pact, on the aggregate fiscal stance for the euro area, on a strategy for investment, and to launch work on a long - term vision to further share sovereignty ensuring the sustainable and smooth functioning of emu. on that note, i am looking forward to our discussion. bis central bankers ’ speeches