*  *  *  Dear guests, dear colleagues, I would like to focus my remarks today on the role of macroeconomic policy for long-term economic growth.
Before talking about the role of policy, I will briefly look back at the economic growth performance of the euro area in the past decade and focus on some of the factors underlying the rate of growth of potential output. I will then look in more detail at how macroeconomic policies can help to increase Europe’s trend growth rate.