These provide additional opportunities to explain our monetary policy decisions and to comment on other topics within the ECB’s sphere of competence. The speeches are an especially useful means of communicating, across the euro area, the single monetary policy formulated by the ECB, which is a supra-national institution.
They allow Governing Council members to convey the collegial view of the Council in their own languages, thereby overcoming potential cultural, linguistic and other national barriers of communication. However, this kind of communication is guided by the “single voice” principle, that is, the views expressed on monetary policy reflect the position of the Governing Council as a whole. This approach has worked well.