First, it is important to recognise that these financial institutions, owing to their balance sheet structure and their long-term horizon may play a positive role in safeguarding the stability of the overall financial system. Second, they may also be sources of vulnerabilities through their increased interdependences and linkages with the banking sector.
On that, let me first say that the primary objective of the ECB is and remains to maintain price stability over the medium term, and we have continued succeeding in that when looking at measures of inflation expectations which are well anchored in line with price stability.