The topic of the panel discussion is a subject of heated debate around the globe and I hope our discussions today would help set a balanced perspective on the issue involved. Let me first try and flag the major issues and present both sides of the argument, without expressing my views at this stage.
Were we to abandon that policy today, we would plunge the euro area into an undesirable situation where both growth and inflation were weak in the long term. Some people refer to that as the “world of 1%” – i.e. 1% growth and 1% inflation. There is, of course, no question of us doing that. But monetary policy cannot do everything.