With the advance of the euro area economy’s position in the cycle, according to the ECB’s latest estimates, there will be a progressive pick-up in inflation levels to close to 2% in the coming years. Indeed, at its meeting on 14 June, the ECB’s Council reached the conclusion that the progress to date towards a sustained adjustment of inflation has been substantial, which gave rise to a gradual reduction in net asset purchases, duly confirmed by subsequent successive meetings of the Governing Council. The anchoring of long-term inflation expectations, the sound underlying firmness of the euro area economy and the maintenance of a high degree of monetary accommodation offer reasons to believe that the sustained convergence of inflation on the Governing Council’s objective will continue in the coming months, and that it will be maintained even after the finalisation of the net purchase programme, in line with the – very gradual – normalisation of monetary policy announced by the ECB’s Council. Fiscal policy should resume the fiscal consolidation process, given that both the public debt/GDP ratio and the structural deficit are holding at levels some distance off the limits set in the Stability and Growth Pact (see Chart 12). In recent years notable headway has been made in correcting some of the imbalances in the Spanish economy, such as the restructuring of the financial system, private-sector deleveraging, the recovery in competitiveness and the attainment of persistent currentaccount surpluses, and the adjustment of the real estate sector.
13/14  The materialisation of some of the risks to the economy that were discerned six months ago only adds to the importance of the challenges for the medium and long term highlighted in the Report and, as I have tried to stress today, to the need to address these challenges speedily and with sufficient resolve. 14/14