In particular, the recovery in investment continues to benefit from very favourable financing conditions and improvements in corporate profitability. Employment gains, which are also benefiting from past labour market reforms, are supporting real disposable income and private consumption. Moreover, the global recovery is increasingly supporting trade and euro area exports.
Two years ago, I concluded my address before this conference saying, “European policymakers need to have at their disposal a wide array of timely, high-quality statistics on which to base their decisions”. This conclusion has been fully vindicated by the financial and economic crisis, both globally and in Europe.