Peter Praet: Economic developments in the euro area Speech by Mr Peter Praet, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the FT Debt Capital Markets Outlook Conference, London, 12 February 2015. *  *  *  I would like to thank John Hutchinson for his contribution to this speech.
Summary Given the “gap” between inflation projections and our policy objective, we decided to launch an expanded asset purchase programme. We had to act because the inflation outlook had deteriorated, while our previous measures had not worked as effectively as we expected.