We are becoming a consumerist society – which brings me to my third concern: The savings culture is losing ground. Over a ten-year span, we note that the savings rate nearly halved, declining from 26.3 per cent in 2000 to 14.4 per cent in 2010. Concurrently final household consumption has risen from 60.3 per cent in 2000 to 74.8 cent in 2010.
We will now report on the outcome of today’s meeting of the Governing Council, which was also attended by the Commission Vice-President, Mr Dombrovskis. Based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we decided to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged.