Reaffirming the price stability objective The crisis has of course not altered our price stability mandate, which is defined in primary law, in the Treaty. Nonetheless, the events of recent years have made it important for the ECB to reaffirm that mandate – specifically, to explain its medium-term orientation and its euro area perspective.
Furthermore, the Governing Council will be equally active in responding to medium-term developments in inflation that fall short of our objective as to those that exceed it. 4  On the role of expectations for monetary policy, see, for example, Woodford (2005).