The definition of price stability is very important, but for me the fundamental issue is the effectiveness of the monetary policy tools and their potential side effects. If the expected rebound in the economy doesn’t eventually happen and the slowdown gets worse, does the ECB have the tools to tackle the situation? We have the tools and are prepared to use them if necessary.
This does not mean that there has been some sort of a change in the fundamentals of monetary policy objectives. Our focus continues to be macroeconomic variables and there is no going back to the detailed redistributive credit policies of the past. The use of micro data in today’s monetary policy making serves a rather different purpose.