Ms Lautenschläger, you’re not only a member of the ECB’s Executive Board, but also Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB. I would therefore like to put the question to you: are our banks safer than they used to be? Yes, they are. They have much more, and higher-quality, capital. They hold much larger liquidity reserves. Risk management practices have improved.
It must take great care not to provide the markets with triggering points; that is to say, points on which the entire credibility of a system or a policy hinges. Then, the markets can undertake a test.