Of course, monetary policy cannot be the only game in town: other policymakers must display the same commitment to ensuring a sustainable economic recovery. Structural reforms can play a key role in turning the cyclical recovery into a structural recovery and the current low interest rate environment makes it politically and economically easier to implement them.
Such reforms, if carried out now, will help to promote favourable economic conditions down the road. 1 See ECB Bank Lending Survey, January 2017, and ECB Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises in the  euro area, April 2016 to September 2016.