During the meeting of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON)&nbsp;in the EP in Brussels, MEPs debate with Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank on the Monetary Dialogue. Statements by Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Pervenche BERES (S&amp;D, FR), Sander LOONES (ECR, BE), Molly SCOTT CATO (Grenns/EFA, UK) and Werner LANGEN (EPP, DE).

Brussels

statement

meeting

BERÈS, Pervenche (S&D, FR)

SCOTT CATO, Molly (Greens/EFA, UK)

DRAGHI, Mario (IT)

monetary dialogue with the ECB (T)

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

LANGEN, Werner (EPP, DE)

LOONES, Sander (ECR, BE)

Monetary Dialogue with Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank: extracts from the opening statement and from the debate

General view of the meeting room, entering of Mario DRAGHI, ECB President.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, We have our criteria there which is a durable and self-sustaining convergence of the rate of inflation to our inflation aim. And we are not there yet, we're not there yet, if anything as I mentioned before inflation is projected to go down next year in a V shape and then go up again the year after. And when we look at the underlying inflation because this V shape profile depends on changes in the base effects of oil prices, mostly, and to a less extend exchange rate developments. But then when we look at the underlying inflation excluding food and energy, we see that it's actually ticked up a little in the last few months, but hasn't really shown yet convincing signs of moving upward. And the reason is that that until now we have observed a quite subdue behaviour of wages which are the primary driver of the underlying inflation. So that is the objective: we have to achieve self-sustained durable convergence of inflation to our objective.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, We do count all the bonds that we have in our portfolio of these member countries that you&rsquo;ve mentioned (Ireland, Portugal and Germany) we are within the 33% limit and the no, the Governing Council has not discussed the change in this limit.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pervenche BER&#200;S (S&amp;D, FR), On the purchasing program you've just confirmed to us that this is an issue with transparency, is not a question of putting a question mark over the whole program. Is rather a question of allowing the Central Bank to move forward and ensure that the program is effective and insure the money transmission is effective as well. But you are talking about the possibility of taking further steps on transparency, will you please give us more details on that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Now on the transparency, as I've just said, I think we are transparent and we&rsquo;ve made improvements by the way since mid-June to now. So the issue is where can we... We have nothing against disclosing information up to the point when disclosure is counter-productive, becomes counter-productive for the implementation of our monetary policy, up to the point when we don't want markets to run against us.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sander LOONES (ECR, BE), There is a proposal circulating and this in order to prevent conflict of interest, stating that the ECB should publish declarations of financial interest for Governing Council members. There is also a proposal circulating to ensure that the ethics committee is not chaired anymore by the former ECB President. It will be interesting to know your views on this two points. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, We surely reflect on both things. I don't think there is in principle anything against either of the two suggestions, but surely both have to be discussed with my colleagues in the Governing Council.

SOUNDBITE (English), Molly SCOTT CATO (Grenns/EFA, UK), I'd like to ask whether you will continue to purchase assets from corporations that have investments in fossil fuels or are mainly directed towards the extraction and sale a fossil fuels.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Let's not forget that the we have a mandate and that's priced ability and there our monetary policy is geared to that mandate. But without prejudice to its primary objective of price stability ECB supports the general economic policies and the aims of the Union. And amongst these, Article 3 of the Treaty explicitly includes the sustainable development of Europe, meaning a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment.

SOUNDBITE (German), Werner LANGEN (EPP, DE), The target two objectives they have fluctuated a lot 7 or 800 billion Euro, then it's gone down and then it&rsquo;s gone back up again and you answered that it's not the structural problem with the financial crisis, but rather it&rsquo;s normal development that have led to increasing again I was wondering what you consider to be normal development?

SOUNDBITE (English), Mario DRAGHI, President of the European Central Bank, Target two developments it is true they are not the outcome of the developments we show during the financial crisis. Much or what we seen the target to developments, not entirely, but much of it, is due to the same asset purchase program in our QE program implemented through the purchase of bonds. And to some extent this is why we are seen higher target to development, more generally with the increasing of confidence in euro area, and with the improving economic conditions as we have seen all across the Euro area now. This development should be less and less source of worry but simply a source of a functioning of the payment system into Euro area.