*  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice-President and I are here to report on the outcome of today’s meeting of the Governing Council of the ECB. Let me first report that the Governing Council decided to reconfirm the existing reference value for monetary growth, namely an annual growth rate of 4 1/2% for the broad aggregate M3.
The current economic expansion has lasted four years, since January 2002, based on the Cabinet Office's reference dates of business cycles. This already makes it the third-longest expansion phase in the post-World War II period.