Earlier I explained the Bank's measures taken in response to the global financial and economic crisis, and all these measures were not forced by law and administrative order but were carried out in the form of market transactions. Be it control over interest rates or provision of funds, they were conducted mainly by purchasing government bonds from the market or lending to financial institutions.
With this forward guidance the Governing Council indicates its commitment to a monetary policy which will realign inflation with our price stability objective. In January euro area headline inflation was a negative –0.6%, and has hovered around 0.2% over the past few months to August 2015.