ECB chief economist speaking to La Libre Belgique

  • ECB will pursue an accommodative monetary policy for as long as is necessary
  • Without giving a date, this timescale is fairly long. It's a long lasting endeavour

Report courtesy of our friends at Livesquawk

EURUSD a tad lower at 1.0875 by what, essentially we already know

"The economic outlook has improved, in an environment where interest rates are low and oil prices have fallen sharply. The positive effects of the structural reforms in a number of countries, such as Spain and Ireland, should also be underscored. These factors have had positive effects on the labour market and on the economic recovery. Fiscal policies will be more neutral too, even slightly expansionary. In fact, they will contribute 0.1% to GDP growth in the euro area in 2016 and 2017.

Enormous fiscal efforts have been made, although debt levels are still too high. However, we must bear in mind that real GDP in the euro area in the first quarter of 2016 will barely return to its level of early 2008. This means that over the last eight years the GDP of the euro area has not grown in real terms, on average, even though countries like Germany saw reasonable growth. Other countries have experienced a severe fall in their living standards for a very long period of time.

This poses a number of problems. The damage caused by a period of non-growth, with two recessions, is considerable. There is, of course, structural unemployment, but business investment also declined considerably during this period and has still not regained its 2008 level. Countries have also cut back sharply on infrastructure investment"

Full interview posted at the ECB website here