* * *  1 Introduction Ladies and gentlemen Welcome to our press conference to present our annual accounts. Before I discuss the most important points of our annual accounts with you, I would like – as is my custom – to say a few words about economic developments and monetary policy.
I will also talk about the institutional architecture of the monetary union, which is the backdrop to monetary policy in the euro area. As you know, the debate on developing the monetary union gained a lot of traction last year as a result of the proposals put forward by Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission.