policy preparations and decisions, and a new interest rate management system for monetary policy has been launched. the endeavour to promote transparency is evident in the riksbank ’ s participation in public hearings by parliamentary committees, in inflation reports, speeches, discussions and seminars of various kinds, and in the publication of specialist reports. this has led, i believe, to a better awareness — among market agents as well as a wider public — of how monetary policy works. one indication of this is that agents ’ expectations about monetary policy have become increasingly congruent with the riksbank ’ s monetary policy intentions. in addition, the five - party agreement on the new riksbank act is a manifestation of broad political support for the low - inflation policy. it is our ambition, moreover, to continue the process for increased transparency as far as is reasonable and feasible. criticism of monetary policy monetary policy has, of course, come in for some criticism. a common issue initially was whether striving for 2 per cent inflation was reasonable and feasible. that discussion seems to have dried up. inflation is currently around 2 per cent and more and more people understand the advantages of this. another question has been why the riksbank does not have the task of promoting other objectives, growth, for example. here, too, there is a growing awareness, though it does not include everyone. in the long run monetary policy is only capable of influencing inflation and there is absolutely no long - term trade - off between inflation and growth. if anything, high inflation tends to impair real economic development. in the short run, however, the situation is somewhat different. in this perspective, inflation and growth are largely two sides of the same coin, at least as long as inflation expectations are stable around the target. weaker growth implies a diminishing risk of inflationary impulses from demand, which normally warrants a less restrictive monetary stance. conversely, demand that is excessively strong in relation to potential output implies a risk of rising inflation and a need to raise the repo rate. the current discussion seems to be about whether the riksbank acts symmetrically. in other words, is the riksbank as concerned about under - shooting the inflation target as it is about preventing inflation from exceeding the target? my answer to that question is definitely “ yes ”. the riksbank aims to keep the rate of inflation at 2 per cent, neither more nor less. the issue of monetary policy asymmetry seems to be linked

2 sur 6 the fintech - innovation unit, the acpr ’ s “ hub ” for project leaders, has naturally seen a decline in the number of requests for support this year ( 63 between january and august compared with about a hundred over the same period in 2022 ). however, the acpr is continuing its efforts to assist innovative projects and help them navigate their regulatory process. in 96 % of cases ( compared with 90 % last year ), the acpr provided a response within two weeks of first being contacted. and once a project has begun the process of gaining authorisation, we have got even closer to meeting our fintech charter objective, with a response time now averaging 10 days ( compared with 12 days last year … and 19 days on the part of the applicants ). in addition, we have started work to improve the parcours fintech website, to make it even easier to access and understand the regulations in force. this will notably help the least experienced project leaders to prepare their applications properly. 2. the current environment should not detract from the underlying trends the current environment should not detract from the underlying trends, and in particular some key structural strengths. our fintechs are continuing to grow ; in france they have the advantage of being able to access a pool of recognised talent as well as an attractive and dynamic financial centre. ongoing technological innovations, and especially current developments in artificial intelligence ( ai ), are opening up new horizons. iii this is illustrated by the exceptionally fast adoption of new generative ai tools, some of which have attracted over 1 million users in just five days. at the banque de france, to understand and take advantage of this new landscape, we have adopted an experimentation approach to speed up the learning process. in may 2023, le lab, our open innovation centre, launched a call for generative ai contributions from the innovation ecosystem, to help us better understand this technology and speed up its adoption by proposing concrete use cases – or even operational solutions. the call for contributions closed on 21 september and three french companies have been selected from page 3 sur 6 among the 25 high - quality application files that were submitted. iv the projects – a generative ai platform, a specialised conversational assistant and a tool to audit generative ai – will allow us to develop solutions that are suitable for use in our missions. ii. application to two new frontiers : tokenised finance and the climate to conquer these new frontiers, we need to take a collective