The Governing Council sees both upside and downside risks to the outlook for price developments as limited and broadly balanced over the medium term. In this context, the possible repercussions of both geopolitical risks and exchange rate developments will be monitored closely. Turning to the monetary analysis, data for February 2014 point to subdued underlying growth in broad money (M3).
As far back as 1970, the committee of experts chaired by the then Luxembourg Prime Minister Pierre Werner, which drew up the first meaningful plan for a European monetary union, stressed that insufficient economic convergence and the absence of a common fiscal policy would give rise to the need for greater economic policy coordination.