The chart clearly demonstrates that the announcement of the asset purchase programme in January 2015 helped to avert the danger of current inflation dragging down expected inflation. But vulnerabilities remain. Nowhere is this more visible than in market-based inflation expectations. You can see this on the left-hand side of my next slide.
According to option prices, the probability that inflation would be between 1.5% and 2% over the next five years fell measurably as the euro area economy weakened over the course of 2018. On the right-hand side you can see that medium-term inflation expectations are currently close to 1.3%, down from 2.5% ten years ago.