providing the ecb with alternative channels for transmitting monetary policy and by enabling capital markets to play a role in cushioning asymmetric shocks. however, to facilitate the mobility and free flow of capital and financial assets across europe, it is essential that an efficient underlying infrastructure is in place. a lot has been achieved already, but still we need to ensure that we use the market infrastructure as effectively as possible. target2 - securities nine years ago this month ( on 23 may 2008 ), the governing council issued a proposal to all european central securities depositories ( csds ) to join t2s. the project was backed by the european parliament, but the ecofin council specified three requirements : ( i ) the platform should be multicurrency ; ( ii ) participation in t2s should not be compulsory ; and ( iii ) access to 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches central bank money should not be restricted for non - participating csds. nine years on and the first roll - out phase of t2s is almost complete. the system is multicurrency and the danish krone is set to join in october 2018. the majority of european markets will be connected, although participation remains voluntary. and some csds outside the european union have even expressed an interest in joining t2s. this february, the successful migration of six csds from austria, germany, hungary, luxembourg, slovakia and slovenia doubled the settlement volume in t2s. today, a daily average of around 500, 000 transactions is settled on the platform. this represents 90 % of the transaction volume that is expected to be settled on the platform after the end of the full migration in september 2017. the volume is in line with the expected yearly forecast done by the advisory group on market infrastructures for securities and collateral. the most recent survey from march 2017 shows that the overall volume growth for the next two years is anticipated to be 5. 3 % on average. additionally, when the danish krone joins next year we expect the volume to increase by 5. 5 million transactions per year. with the introduction of t2s, the average cost at market infrastructure level per transaction has decreased significantly – in particular for cross - csd transactions. our initial cost estimations showed that the average fee per domestic csd settlement in the euro area was 73 euro cent while cross - border transactions were up to ten times more expensive. the launch of t2s has brought the transaction fee per instruction down to 15 euro cent

exchange rate objective could easily jeopardise the maintenance of the objective of price stability and could thereby also be detrimental to real economic development. target zones for exchange rates could, for example, lead to the ecb having to raise interest rates in a recession, despite increasing downward pressure on prices. i am sure you will agree that such a mechanistic response to a change in the euro exchange rate would not be optimal. furthermore, it is important to remember that we are living in a world with high capital mobility. exchange rate agreements, which might have been possible to implement until recently, are no longer feasible. the lack of an exchange rate target does not mean that the ecb is totally indifferent to or takes no account of the euro exchange rate. on the contrary, the exchange rate will be observed and analysed as a potentially important monetary policy indicator in the context of the broadly based assessment of the outlook for price developments. a stability - oriented monetary and fiscal policy, as stipulated by the maastricht treaty and the stability and growth pact, is an essential pre - condition for a stable euro exchange rate. of course, there is no guarantee of lasting exchange rate stability, not even in a fixed exchange rate regime. exchange rate fluctuations are often caused by structural or fiscal policy, asymmetric real shocks or conjunctural differences. monetary policy would clearly be overburdened if it had to prevent such movements in the exchange rate. we cannot and shall not gear our monetary policy towards a single variable, whether a money supply aggregate, an index, the exchange rate or an inflation forecast for a particular point in time. nor can we be involved in any ex ante co - ordination which would entail an obligation to react to particular commitments or plans. the ecb will always carefully analyse all relevant indicators. in this context, it is particularly important that the economic causes of potential risks to price stability in the euro area are understood as fully as possible. appropriate monetary policy decisions also depend upon the causes of unexpected changes in important economic variables. the governing council must, for example, take a view on whether changes in important indicators are of a temporary or permanent nature, and whether a demand or supply shock is involved. in our deliberations we also attempt to take into account how the financial markets, consumers and firms are expected to react to monetary policy decisions. i believe few would contest that such a complex analysis cannot meaningfully be reduced to a more or less mechan