talked a lot about past achievements and future challenges. and i have talked about the need to work together as a team. but, of course, all good teams need good leaders. and speaking of good leaders brings me to aurel schubert. as aurel is due to retire soon, i would like to take the opportunity tonight to say a few words about what he has done for this institution. for eight years now, he has steered the ecb statistics ship with great competence. aurel has made invaluable contributions to some of our most ambitious projects : the granular securities holdings statistics, the mmsr and anacredit. thanks to his leadership, supervisory statistics were available from the start of european banking supervision. he helped amend our statistical legal framework to align it with international standards. but, of course, his career started long before he became director general of statistics. he has worked in the field since 1997. over these past 21 years, he has participated in 90 meetings of the statistics committee and chaired 34 of them. he has also been a vice - chair of the irving fisher committee, a co - chair of the european statistical forum, and chair of the esrb contact group on data. all these achievements are facts, of course. and they show that aurel knows his subject, thinks strategically and masters the politics. these are all important aspects of being a good leader. but they are not the only things that are important. a leader cannot act alone ; they rely on other people. and aurel is an outstanding people manager. i think he can teach us all a thing or two when it comes to forming a team, keeping people motivated, managing change and, most important of all, creating an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect. in that sense, i see him as a role model. aurel, i thank you very much. conclusion ladies and gentlemen, in my speech tonight, i have reminded you of some of your many achievements, both recent and past. but what matters most is not the next big project or the latest database. what matters most are the high professional standards which you have all maintained in your work. and, if we want to keep fighting alternative facts with real facts and fake news with real news, you must continue on this path with the same conviction as you started out with in 1998. and now let me conclude with a fact of life that is all too true : dinner speeches are always too long. there is no way to spin this any

facts. one of the key questions is how we can engage with those who doubt us. in my view, there are two things we need to do. the first is to admit that real - world statistics have their limits, and to be transparent about how and when we use judgement. the second is to ensure that we, as institutions and as individual experts, earn people ’ s trust. statistics is a discipline that is certainly aware of its own limits : it not only acknowledges uncertainty, it quantifies it! but we must also admit that there is not just scope, but also a need, to apply judgement when producing good data and statistics. and trust plays a key role here. people can trust the ecb and the national central banks to apply expert judgement when it is needed. in my speech today, i will focus on key ingredients that have been crucial in building up the ecb ’ s good reputation over the past 20 years. the first is to have good data and to use them well when taking decisions. the second is to ensure good cooperation. the third is to keep pace with changing times. good data for good decisions 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches i am aware that the need for good data may seem self - explanatory, especially for an audience of statisticians. but that doesn ’ t make it less important, particularly in the case of the ecb. the stakes are extremely high : whether for monetary policy or banking supervision, our decisions impact the lives of over 340 million people. this gives the data we use, and the analysis we carry out, enormous importance. our data need to be reliable and our statistics sound. only then will they be able to form the basis for good decisions. but not all data are created equal. even well - collected data may fall short of answering the burning questions of our experts. with the 2008 crisis, for example, we learned the hard way why better and more granular data are necessary. aggregate data provided us with the big picture of the euro area economy and its financial markets. but the big picture was too blurry. and, at times, it was downright misleading. money markets were a good example. after all, money markets are where the transmission of monetary policy starts. prior to the crisis, the ecb collected microdata on these markets through the euro money market survey, the emms for short. this survey shed light on what was happening in the money markets during the crisis.