do you believe in the possibility of second - round effects resulting from wage increases, as we are now seeing in germany? it is up to each central bank to avoid second - round effects when we see a price shock affecting raw materials and energy sources, on which we cannot take action. that ’ s even our fundamental duty. what matters is to prevent other prices from matching those movements, which have to remain temporary. in particular, the various economic agents and the social partners must not imagine that the correct inflation rate to take into account is that which comes from the abrupt rise in energy prices. in the medium term, all economic agents must bear in mind that the correct reference is that of less than 2 %, close to 2 % in the medium term, which we ’ ve made completely credible. that medium - term price stability is our primary mandate, and we owe it to our fellow citizens. let ’ s not forget that inflation affects in particular the poorest and least advantaged members of society. the ecb has embarked on a series of non - standard measures to react to the crisis. what ’ s your initial assessment? alongside standard measures relating to the key interest rates, set solely in order to attain medium - term price stability, we have been using non - standard tools : they aim to help restore bis central bankers ’ speeches the efficiency of the transmission of monetary policy to the economy in a context of certain dysfunctional markets. as it happens, we intervened as early as august 2007, providing unlimited liquidity at fixed rates, because the crisis had led to a dysfunctioning of the money market. today, we are seeing that the interbank market is working better. there are however a small number of banks which are still too dependent on the ecb. to solve this problem gradually, it is important that they are not encouraged to resort to the central bank rather than to the markets, and that ’ s why the governing council is insisting that they increase their capital and use all the facilities offered to them by the member states. is your policy of buying the bonds of “ peripheral ” states on the markets efficient? it ’ s one of the non - standard measures that we have taken to restore the transmission of monetary policy. we make public every week the scale of our interventions, but not the specific market we are intervening in. in any case, we absorb each week the liquidity that was injected as a result of this programme. we do not carry out quantitative easing. but don ’ t

forget : our primary mandate is price stability in the euro area as a whole. interest rates are set according to this medium - term objective. and the intervention programme is such as to allow the best possible transmission of our policy in the euro area as a whole. why did you say that you would prefer the european financial stability facility ( efsf ) to buy government bonds rather than the ecb, if what is at stake is restoring monetary policy transmission? it is because certain governments, individually, have behaved in an abnormal manner, and because all governments have fallen short in their collective supervisory duties that we are seeing anomalies in the behaviour of certain markets. the governments have to meet their responsibilities. it is for this reason, in particular, that i have asked for the efsf to be enhanced, in quality and quantity. the possibility for the efsf to purchase government bonds is part of this thinking. the euro area has gone through a rocky period because of the sovereign debt crisis in certain countries, to the point of doubt being cast on the sustainability of the single currency. do you believe the measures being taken concerning the efsf are appropriate to avoid a similar situation arising again in the future? the euro is a currency which inspires confidence. it is credible for the next ten years, and beyond. moreover, the situation in the euro area as a whole is in many respects better than that in comparable economies. our current account is in balance, which is far from being the case in all major industrial countries, and our consolidated annual government deficit for 2011, as a proportion of gdp, should be half those of the united states and japan. the monetary union part of economic and monetary union ( emu ) is working well, thanks to the fact that we are constantly on our guard. on the other hand, there is still much to be done as regards economic union. this is because some countries have not had satisfactory budgetary policies, and because the supervisory system in place since the creation of the euro has not functioned correctly. our message has always been that, in the context of a single currency without political federation, there has to be an extremely strong framework of budgetary stability. we signalled this again most forcefully when in 2005 a number of major member countries, including france, germany and italy, tried to weaken considerably the stability and growth pact by denouncing what they said to be its excessive orthodoxy. having lived through the recent challenges, both individual and collective, nobody