In fulfilment of this task, the Treaty establishing the European Community assigns to the Eurosystem the primary task of maintaining price stability.
In order to guide expectations of future price developments and to facilitate the public’s assessment of the success of the single monetary policy, the Governing Council has announced a quantitative definition of its primary objective: price stability has been defined as a year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%, to be maintained over the medium term.