In a few weeks, the ECB will be entering what is practically a new era. You are taking over supervision of the most important European banks. That is a balance sheet of more than € trillion. The question is, therefore, are you up to the task? Are you ready for take-off?
And this would make it harder to achieve the inflation target in the future. In January, the conditions had changed but the reasoning behind our decision was similar. Consumer confidence declined in late 2019, but there seemed to be a reasonable chance that this would prove temporary.