This implies that we need to further build our analytical toolkit to identify risks and devise a coherent policy response. It calls for intensifying both our outreach to state-of-the-art research from academia and our analytical work in-house. As mentioned earlier, deepening our understanding on the interplay between monetary and macroprudential policies is a key priority in a low-for-longer interest rate environment. Furthermore, we aim at better capturing interactions between banks, other market participants and the real economy in a fully integrated macroprudential stress-testing framework combining macro and micro building blocks. This requires estimating and modelling behaviour of financial and non-financial agents to realistically capture their balance sheet adjustments also in times of stress. On the policy side, our key priority is to become more agile in fulfilling our countercyclical macroprudential policy mandate. We need to ensure that releasable buffers are available to enable the banking system to support the real economy in a downturn. At present, the best option is to set the CCyB in a capital-neutral manner to be able to withstand current headwinds. I wish us all an insightful conference. [1] See, for instance, van der Ghote, A. (2018), “Coordinating monetary and financial regulatory policies”, Working Paper Series, No 2155, ECB, June. [2] See Cozzi, G., Darracq Pariès, M., Karadi, P., Koerner, J., Kok, C., Mazelis, F., Nikolov, K., Rancoita, E., Van der Ghote, A. and Weber, J. (2019), “Macroprudential policy measures: macroeconomic impact and interaction with monetary policy”, Working Paper Series, ECB, forthcoming.
[9] There are currently eight globally important banks in the euro area (in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) holding additional buffers of between 1% and 2%, and 108 other systemically important institutions with buffers of up to 2%. Systemic risk buffers have been activated in five countries, with a range of between 0.5% and 3%, and the countercyclical capital buffers have been announced in seven countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Slovakia) with rates between 0.25% and 2%. For more information, see “Macroprudential measures in countries subject to ECB Banking Supervision and notified to the ECB” on the ECB website. [10] For a discussion of recent CCyB decisions, see Babić, D. and Fahr, S. (2019) “Shelter from the storm: recent countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) decisions”, Macroprudential Bulletin No. 7, ECB. [11] See, for example, “  Refining the Stress Capital Buffer”, speech by the Vice-Chair for Supervision, Randal K. Quarles, at the Program on International Financial Systems Conference, Frankfurt, Germany, 5 September 2019. European Central Bank Directorate General Communications Sonnemannstrasse 20, 60314 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Tel. : +49 69 1344 7455, E-mail: media@ecb.europa.eu Website: www.ecb.europa.eu Reproduction is permitted provided that the source is acknowledged. Media contacts  Copyright 2019, European Central Bank