Professor Fischer, Ladies and gentlemen, What must be clear from what I have said so far is what constitutes the limitations to our actions, consistent both with the letter of our mandate and with the philosophy of the market economy that underpins it.
The recent broadening of the euro area recovery and the marked drop in cross-country dispersion in a number of economic indicators is an encouraging development. It underscores that our monetary policy measures have materially reduced financial fragmentation and that their positive effects are increasingly spreading more evenly across the euro area.