I shall first present my recollection of the challenges that the ECB had to face and the "battles" in which it was involved in its – very short – past. Then, I shall proceed to what I consider to be the challenges of the present and what, in my view, lurks just around the corner.
Experience of the first two years The appropriate conduct of monetary policy in an imperfectly known world is by definition a standing challenge for any central bank at any time. It is always difficult to draw a correct picture of the world from sometimes ambiguous and contradicting raw data.