The political leaders gave a very sharp reaction to your first rate hike in December, but not to the second in March. Did you convince them in the meantime or how do you explain that? The ECB is totally and fiercely independent, as you can read in the Treaty on European Union. Its credibility is based upon this independence.
I will return to the fiscal policy contribution later on. Since its announcement in March, the PEPP has acted as a powerful market-stabilising force. In the euro area, sovereign yields play a pivotal role in the transmission of monetary policy, since these affect the funding costs of corporates, households and banks (as well as governments, of course).