When the sad news of Tommaso’s passing away reached us, we were preparing the inaugural meeting of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), which I have the honour to chair. Poor Tommaso passed away before we had the ESRB inaugural meeting on 20 January 2011.
Assessment of the euro area’s growth performance Let me start with an assessment of the euro area’s growth performance. Since the 1980s, real GDP in the euro area has grown on average at a pace almost one percentage point lower than in the U.S.