As convincingly argued in the recent report by the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board, over the past 20–25 years banking systems in Europe have become, too leveraged, too concentrated, and sometimes also too big. Hence they created a major risk for the stability of the European financial system. Let me present some evidence provided by the ESRB.
Inflation developments, however, remain subdued, and we have not yet met the Governing Council’s three criteria – convergence, confidence and resilience – for a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, which is our stated condition for ceasing our net asset purchases.