Meeting of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs&nbsp;with Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, in the EP in Brussels. Statements by Pablo ZALBA BIDEGAIN (EPP, ES) and Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank.

Brussels

debate

meeting

DRAGHI, Mario (IT)

monetary dialogue with the ECB (T)

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

ZALBA BIDEGAIN, Pablo (EPP, ES)

Monetary Dialogue with Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank: extracts

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, This judgement confirms the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union which concluded that the OMT programme is compatible with EU law and falls within our mandate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Inflation should pick up towards the end of 2016. Thereafter, inflation is expected to increase further to 1.3% in 2017 and to 1.6% in 2018, as a strengthening economic recovery mobilises unused resources.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Since the start of 2016, and even more evidently since the corporate bond purchase programme was announced in March, borrowing conditions for companies with direct access to the bond market have improved materially.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Tomorrow we will start conducting the first operation of our new series of targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II). TLTRO II will allow banks to secure long-term funding at very attractive conditions that can be as low as the deposit facility rate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Without our policy stimulus, both growth and inflation would be significantly lower.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, We stand ready to act by using all the instruments available within our mandate, if necessary, to achieve our objective. In particular, the ECB is ready for all contingencies following the UK&rsquo;s EU referendum.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, For this recovery to be consolidated, our efforts should now concentrate on strong policy action to improve the business environment, favour investment and raise productivity. Delivering on these objectives will not only create the conditions for inflation to accelerate its return to levels below, but close to, 2%.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Pablo ZALBA BIDEGAIN (EPP, ES), If we are looking at the scenario, and we all hope it will not happen if the British chose to leave the European Union, what kind of action will the ECB take, will it be enough, what else will be required to mitigate the impact of a potential exit of the United Kingdom?

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, It would be difficult to speculate about one outcome instead of another. And so let me just say that we try to be ready to cope with all possible contingencies. At this point it would be very difficult to be more precise than that, I think we have done all the preparation that is necessary now.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, To have this shock absorbing mechanism we have to have trust between countries in place. And to have trust in place one needs that solidarity comes together with solidarity. For that to happen one needs at least 2 important behaviours by Member countries, one is compliance with the rules and the 2nd one is convergence.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, There isn't any plan to work with the UK, there are extensive consultations between all Central banks in the world and in the IMF, so no plans and no commitments of that kind of sort.