All in all, I wouldn’t say that banks are being overburdened by regulation. Nevertheless, for small and medium-sized banks, the burden is relatively heavy. In keeping with the principle of proportionality, we should reflect on an adjustment of regulatory and supervisory standards to the size of banks – provided that financial stability is not at risk.
Likewise, the remaining monetary policy instruments in place – ranging from our key ECB interest rates to the Governing Council’s forward guidance and the Asset Purchase Programme – make a crucial contribution to the ample degree of monetary accommodation that is necessary to support economic activity and the robust convergence of inflation to our definition of price stability.