The credibility of the inflation target must be preserved The Riksbank has been criticised for explicitly using the policy rate for a short period after the global financial crisis to try to counteract the build-up of financial imbalances.32 For a few years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the Riksbank and other forecasters were able to observe that inflation had not risen in the way they had expected; from 2010 until the middle of 2014 inflation had been steadily below target. Long-term inflation expectations had also started to fall and there was a risk that the role of the inflation target as a benchmark for price and wage formation would be weakened. In other words, the credibility of the inflation target was being lost. Critics of the Riksbank's monetary policy said that this was because monetary policy had "leaned against the wind". More recently, the criticism has tended to be the opposite and focused on the Riksbank's expansionary policy in the years after this, when inflation was below the target. The Riksbank has then been criticised for monetary policy having focused too much on inflation, being too expansionary and leading to the build-up of imbalances. When the Riksbank takes financial stability into account in its monetary policy decisions, this can mean that the target horizon is shifted, and then it is not surprising that both inflation and inflation expectations can be affected. This need not be a problem as long as it applies for a shorter period of time.
Even if it were possible, going back to the ECU would present major disadvantages compared to today’s euro: until the euro was introduced, France did not actually participate in decisions on interest rate levels and had to follow German monetary policy; the franc was at the mercy of speculative attacks from the financial markets that drained our currency reserves as we saw in the 1992-1993 period. The euro was introduced to solve these problems. Today, the euro is alive and well. It is the currency of 340 million Europeans, is recognised worldwide and is trusted by the people of France. Almost 70% of French citizens are in favour of the euro because it protects their purchasing power, with prices that increase three times less rapidly than previously; because it makes borrowing easier, with interest rates that are 1.5% to 3% lower; and because it safeguards the value of their savings. Finally, I would like to add that the Eurosystem has not modified its sovereign debt purchase programme in relation to France’s presidential elections. The distribution of monthly purchases between the various countries is based on the ECB’s capital allocation principle. 1/1  BIS central bankers' speeches