 Good afternoon and welcome to the ECB press conference. I'm joined here on stage by President Lagarde and by Vice President Degindos. And my name is Wolfgang Preussel. As always, this is a hybrid press conference. So for the online participants, I would ask them to turn on their camera and their microphones if they wish to ask questions. And with that, I turn over to President Lagarde. Please. Thank you very much and good afternoon. The Vice President and I welcome you to our press conference. The inflation outlook continues to be too high and for too long. In light of the ongoing high inflation pressures, the governing council today decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points. Overall, the incoming information broadly supports the assessment of the medium-term inflation outlook that we formed at our previous meeting. Headline inflation has declined over recent months, but underlying price pressures remain strong. At the same time, our past rate increases are being transmitted forcefully to euro area financing and monetary conditions with the lags and strength of transmission to the real economy remain uncertain. Our future decisions will ensure that the policy rates will be brought to levels sufficiently restrictive to achieve a timely return of inflation to our 2% medium-term target and will be kept at those levels for as long as necessary. We will continue to follow a data-dependent approach to determining the appropriate level and duration of restrictions. In particular, our policy rate decisions will continue to be based on our assessment of the inflation outlook in light of the incoming economic and financial data, the dynamics of underlying inflation and the strength of monetary policy transmission. The key ECB interest rates remain our primary tool for setting the monetary policy stance. In parallel, we will keep reducing the Euro Systems Asset Purchase Program portfolio at a measured and predictable pace. In line with these principles, the governing council expects to discontinue the reinvestments under the APP as of July 2023. The decisions taken today are set out in a press release that is available on our website. And I will now outline in more details how we see the economy and inflation developing and will then explain our assessment of financial and monetary conditions. Looking at the economic activity, the Euro area economy grew by 0.1% in the first quarter of 2023, according to Eurostat preliminary flash estimate. Lower energy prices, the easing of supply bottlenecks, and fiscal policy support for firms and households have contributed to the resilience of the economy. At the same time, private domestic demand, especially consumption, is likely to have remained weak. Business and consumer confidence have recovered steadily in recent months, but remain weaker than before Russia's unjustified war against Ukraine and its people. We see a divergence across sectors of the economy. The manufacturing sector is working through a backlog of orders, but its prospects are worsening. The services sector is growing more strongly, especially owing to the reopening of the economy. Household incomes are benefiting from the strength of the labor market, with the unemployment rate falling to a new historical low of 6.5% in March. Employment has continued to grow, and total hours worked exceed pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, the average number of hours worked remains somewhat below its pre-pandemic level, and its recovery has stalled since mid-2022. As the energy crisis fades, governments should roll back the related support measures promptly and in a concerted manner to avoid driving up medium-term inflationary pressures, which would call for a stronger monetary policy response. Fiscal policies should be oriented towards making our economy more productive and gradually bringing down high public debt. Policies to enhance the euro area's supply capacity, especially in the energy sector, can also help reduce price pressures in the medium term. In this regard, we welcome the publication of the European Commission's legislative proposals for the reform of the EU's Economic Governance Framework, which should be concluded soon. Turning now to inflation. According to Eurostat's flash estimate, inflation was at 7% in April, after having dropped from 8.5% in February down to 6.9% in March. While base effects led to some increase in energy price inflation from minus 0.9% in March to plus 2.5% in April, the rate stands far below those recorded after the start of Russia's war against Ukraine. Food price inflation remains elevated. However, standing at 13.6% in April after 15.5% in March. Price pressures remain strong. Inflation, excluding energy and food, was 5.6% in April, having edged down slightly compared with March to return to its February level. Non-energy industrial goods inflation fell to 6.2% in April, from 6.6% in March, when it declined for the first time in several months. But services inflation increased to 5.2% in April from 5.1% in March. Inflation is still being pushed up by the gradual pass through of past energy cost increases and supply bottlenecks. In services especially, it is still being pushed higher also by pent-up demand from the reopening of the economy and by rising wages. The information available up to March suggests that indicators of underlying inflation remain high. Wage pressures have strengthened further as employees in the context of a robust labor market recoup some of the purchasing power they have lost as a result of high inflation. Moreover, in some sectors, firms have been able to increase their profit margins on the back of mismatches between supply and demand and the uncertainty created by high and volatile inflation. Although most measures of longer-term inflation expectations currently stand at around 2%, some indicators have edged up and warrant continued monitoring. Let us now look at our risk assessment. Renewed financial market tensions, if persistent, would pose a downside risk to the outlook for growth as they could tighten broader credit conditions more strongly than expected and dampen confidence. Russia's war against Ukraine also continues to be a significant downside risk to the economy. However, the recent reversal of past adverse supply shocks, if sustained, could spur confidence and support higher growth than currently expected. The continued resilience of the labor market by bolstering household confidence and spending could also lead to higher growth than anticipated. There are still significant upside risks to the inflation outlook. These include existing pipeline pressures that could send retail prices higher than expected in the near term. Moreover, Russia's war against Ukraine could again push up the costs of energy and food. A lasting rise in inflation expectations above our target or higher than anticipated increases in wages or profit margins could also drive inflation higher including over the medium term. Recent negotiated wage agreements have added to the upside risks to inflation, especially if profit margins remain high. The downside risks include renewed financial market tensions which could bring inflation down faster than projected. Weaker demand due, for example, to a more marked slowing of bank lending or a stronger transmission of monetary policy would also lead to lower price pressures than currently anticipated, especially over the medium term. So let's look at the financial and monetary conditions. The euro area banking sector has proved resilient in the face of the financial market tensions that arose ahead of our last meeting. Our policy rate increases are being transmitted strongly to risk-free interest rates and to the financing conditions for firms, households, and banks. For firms and households, loan growth has weakened owing to higher borrowing rates, tighter credit supply conditions, and lower demand. Our latest bank lending survey reported a tightening of overall credit standards which was stronger than banks had expected in the previous round and suggests that lending may weaken further. Weak lending has meant that money growth has also continued to decline. Summing up, the inflation outlook continues to be too high for too long. In light of the ongoing high inflation pressures, the governing council today decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points. Overall, the incoming information broadly supports the assessment of the medium-term inflation outlook that we formed at our previous meeting. Headline inflation has declined over a recent month, but underlying price pressures remain strong. At the same time, our past rate increases are being transmitted forcefully to euro area financing and monetary conditions while the lag and strength of transmission to the real economy remain uncertain. Our future decisions will ensure that the policy rates will be brought to levels sufficiently restrictive to achieve a timely return of inflation to our 2% medium-term target and will be kept at those levels for as long as necessary. We will continue to follow a data-dependent approach to determining the appropriate level and duration of restriction. In particular, our policy rate decisions will continue to be based on our assessment of the inflation outlook in light of the incoming economic and financial data, the dynamics of underlying inflation, and the strength of monetary policy transmission. In any case, we stand ready to adjust all of our instruments within our mandate to ensure that inflation returns to our medium-term target and to preserve the smooth functioning of monetary policy transmission. We are now ready to take your questions. Thank you, President Lagarde. And the first question goes to Annette Weissbach from CNBC. Annette, please. Thank you very much, President Lagarde. I have, of course, two questions. My first question would be on the rationale behind the reduced pace in the interest rate hike of 25 basis points. So why did you come up with that? And my second question goes to the US regional lender banking crisis, which isn't over yet. So how concerned are you about potential spillover effects to the euro area? Thank you. Well, thank you for your question. I will take the first, and maybe I will ask my colleague and friend, Vice President Luiz de Gindos, to address the second one. So let me tell you a little bit about the mood in the room of the governing council. I would characterize the mood as determined. All governors are determined to fight inflation, tame inflation and return it to 2% medium term. And we all concluded, as you have seen, that the inflation outlook is too high and has been so for too long. I would say then that the mood was very focused and yet it is an in-between projection governing council meeting. But we were extremely attentive to all data that was available to us. And obviously, one case in point is the bank lending survey that you all received or saw on Tuesday when it was published and which contains a lot of intelligence and information about the intention and the comparison between the lending practices and standards with what was expected by the banks. And I'm happy to come back to that later. But it explains, obviously, the decision that we made for this 25 basis point increase. I think in terms of method, we were method dependent in many ways, just as we are data dependent because we have articulated the reaction function of our monetary policy decisions with the three key elements of the inflation outlook informed by the financial and economic data, the underlying inflation and the strength of monetary policy transmission. So we checked all the data that we had against these three criteria. And as is always the case at the governing council meeting, there was a variety of views expressed. And I think that it's fair to say that everybody agreed that increasing rate was necessary. That second, we are not pausing. That's very clear. Third, we know that we have more ground to cover on the basis of the baseline that we had which is still guiding us until we have our next projection exercise and on the basis of the data that we have received in the course of the last few days and that we brought together during the meeting. So I think the ultimate balancing act which received almost unanimous support and that is reflected in the monetary policy statement in front of you was really predicated on the methods, the data we received, the understanding that where we are is totally consistent with the baseline that we had for the outlook last time around. Remember at the last March meeting, that's what I said. And second, that underlying inflation is still high. And third, informed by the bank lending survey and the data that we have concerning interest rates which is a little bit outdated because it goes back to February, the transmission of our monetary policy is working at least to the financing leg and we're not yet certain about the next leg which is transmission from banks to the real economy. So it's on the basis of all that, that we made our decision. Now that we have increased rates significantly and sometimes by very large increments, I hope assessing, not assessing but establishing absolute credibility on our determination, it was sensible in view of what I have told you to return to a more standard increment with the understanding that based on the information we have today, we have more ground to cover and we are not pausing. That's extremely clear. Good afternoon. Turning to your second question, I think that we should start by a consideration. If you look at the characteristics of the US banks that are running through difficulties, I think that there are some common features. The first one is that they are medium-sized, regional, they share a very concrete and very idiosyncratic business model and they are quite open to interest rate risks. They are vulnerable to an increase in yields. And I think that this model, this situation is not extrapolatable to the European banking industry. Well, I will not repeat what we have said many times. European banks are resilient at the level of capital, the level of liquidity, the quality of the liquid assets. But I think that simultaneously we have to remember that an increase in interest rates in yields is positive for the European banks because the increase in margins outweighs the potential losses that this increase in yields could cause in fixing portfolios. But I think that is quite clear that there is no space for complacency. One of the things that we have been all of us surprised is about how rapidly a bank bank can take place and how rapidly a bank can be emptied. And I think that this is the combination of new factors. The first one is digital banking and the second one is social networks. And the combination of both have even rise to a new situation. And I think that supervisors and regulators, we have to bear in mind that new framework because we believe that this is going to be key in the near future. Thank you, President, Vice President. The next question goes to Francesco Canepa of Reuters. Francesco, please. Thank you, Francesco Canepa, Reuters. So my first question is about whether anyone at the meeting insisted on a larger rate hike or on a clearer commitment to more hikes. You just hinted at that by talking about ground to cover, but it wasn't quite as explicit as it was back in the winter when you were talking about steady pace and several rate hikes. Second question is about something you just said, which is, again, that you had more ground to cover. Would you say that we are still in the middle of the journey or towards the end in the home stretch? Thank you. I'm tempted to remind you of the Emerson quote. It's not so much the destination that matters, but the journey. And we are on a journey, okay? And we are not pausing. And under present circumstances and based on what we have, which is the baseline of March, we know that we have more ground to cover, okay? And there is a clear reference to that if you look carefully, and I know you have because you do that very well. But in the second paragraph of the Monetary Policy Statement, we explicitly refer to that by saying that our future decisions will ensure that the policy rates will be brought to levels sufficiently restrictive to achieve a timely return of inflation to our 2% medium-term target and will be kept at those levels for as long as necessary. We have covered a lot of ground in the last nine months, right? Moving from minus 50 basis points to plus 300 basis points. We are continuing this hiking process. As I said, this is a journey. We have not arrived yet. As to, you know, the exact amount of, you know, by how much do we increase rates? As I said in my introduction in the response to the first questions, there was a variety of views. Some governors suggested that maybe 50 was appropriate. Others also believed that 25 was appropriate. In here, anybody suggest that zero would be appropriate. So that confirms to you that this is a hiking journey that we are on and it will continue to be so. But at the end of the deliberations and having had a chance to confront our views and to, you know, answer the questions and to really sort of put everything in perspective, there was a general, very strong consensus behind the decision that you have in front of you. Thank you, Madame Lagarde. And the next question is for Jana Rando of Bloomberg News. Thank you. Morning. Good afternoon. I would like to invite you to elaborate a little bit more on your definition of sufficiently restrictive. The IMF had a view the other day, seeing the terminal rate at 3.75%, a lot of economists do that as well. Would that be something given the inflation outlook we have at the moment that would be in the ballpark of sufficiently restrictive? The other question I have is that at the last meeting you had a little bit of a debate about overtightening and having to reverse course and I'm wondering whether that discussion continued this time and whether you would actually be worried that the scenario might be interpreted as a policy mistake. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't have a magic number of what constitutes open quote sufficiently restrictive end of quote. I think that the honest answer is we will know what that is when we get there and we are in the process of moving in that direction. I think what's important is to understand what it means to have restrictive rates and to be in restrictive territory and I think the best example is to see whether the rate decisions that we make, the rate increases that we decide are actually having an impact on the economic actors and when we look at the bank lending survey in particular we look at the interest rates and the pace at which it has increased in the last few months. It is obviously the fact that interest rate decisions that we made and the interest rates level where we are are having an effect. Is it a sufficient effect yet? We don't know because we are not seeing the transmission at this point in time into what I call the second leg of the economy which is the real activity which then has an impact on prices and then reduces inflation. So full cycle we are not seeing yet. We are seeing inflation coming down, don't get me wrong, because headline is coming down as a result of energy prices having coming down significantly as a result of the easing of bottlenecks but we are not yet seeing the complete impact that we desire in order to arrive at the 2% medium term that constitutes our target. We are very attentive, we look at that as you know, it's one of the three components that we look at, the inflation outlook, but it is restrictive, no question about it, is it sufficiently restrictive? Not yet. Thank you, thank you President Lagarde and the next question goes to Martin Arnold of the Financial Times. Martin, please. Thank you, hello President Lagarde. I have two questions for you. The first one is on the decision to accelerate the pace of shrinking the bond portfolio at the ECB. Does that mean now that you're stopping all reinvestments in the APP, does that mean that you plan to reduce the APP to zero eventually? And the second question that I have is was this decision part of a compromise deal to convince those arguing for a 50 basis point move to accept a 25 basis point move in return for accelerating the pace of shrinking your balance sheet. Thank you. Thank you very much Martin for this sort of double question on the same issue of the APP. Well I would say number one, we made the decision but the decision specifically says we expect. So we expect to let the APP run off as time goes by and in answer to your question about do we go to zero, if we do then it's going to take the next 15 years so I don't think I'll be around for that. I know I won't and I'm not sure that you will be around but the ultimate perspective is that one as we consider things today. You know we've decided to expect the effectiveness of that decision as of July, saving a little bit of optionality just in case simply because we have seen that the partial reinvestment that we decided back in that has been effective since March has actually run very smoothly and has been well absorbed by markets. So we don't see any point in not accelerating the move because there are valid reasons for that. Lower the amount of excess liquidity, compliments our policy rate increases, reduce the side effect of a large balance sheet. All of that completely justifies the fact that the APP is let to run off gradually over the course of time which will be an average 25 billion per month not reinvested roughly. But as I said to run the whole APP program to zero it will take 12 to 15 years given the maturities of what we have. I would just reserve one thing because we discussed it during the governing council and it's not reflected in the monetary policy statement. As you know we have adopted a tilting approach to our investment policy of the APP and in particular for the corporate bonds which are the prime targets of that tilting in order to privilege those corporates that have a good environmental footprint that have a transition plan and disclose all the appropriate information about their plans. Now of course if we go to full run off that tilting process is not going to be applicable because there will be nothing to tilt it off. There will be no basis for that. So I think the jury is out as to how we can continue to deliver on our Paris Agreement compliant investment reinvestment program without the reinvestment phase and how do we address that which is something that we agreed we would take into account and consider to see how we respond to that. Was it a deal? No. I think there was a general view that that was the right move completely sensible legitimate at this point in time given the market absorption. I think some might have preferred to wait until the June meeting to announce it given that it's effective as of the 1st of July but you know with the principle of predictability that we had agreed in the first place we thought it was just better off to just announce it with reserving a little optionality on the side. Thank you President Lagarde and the next question goes to Vick of BFM TV, French television. Good afternoon Mrs. Lagarde about the last banking landing survey is there a target for bank lending or limits in credit tightening? How do you monitor these indicators? And second question you said recently in relation to bank failures on the credit risk case that you really need to measure what comes out of this financial event so what are the indicators that you're looking at would you say that there is a banking crisis what's your view of what's happening there in the banking system? Thank you. Yeah on the you know we know of one and only one target and this is our medium term target 2%. That's what is riveting our attention. But of course the bank lending survey that we receive on a quarterly basis informs us about the tightening of credit to the economy and it also informs us about what the banks assess will be or will not be the tightening. And it's quite a sophisticated survey which is really for information intelligence anticipation of the credit tightening now and the credit tightening going forward. It's also illustrative of the demand and that's an interesting point because in the BLS the demand from corporates is really really down. So that's you know learning that we take which indicates that our interest rate policies is beginning to have an impact because when asked the corporates say and we had the corporate survey that was conducted they say it's the interest rates. It's not that you know we don't want to invest but the interest rates are pretty high and that leads me to the restrictive territory or not. Yes we are in restrictive territory because if that is the response of corporates then it shows that this work. You know on Credit Suisse I think I'll say a few words and then I'll ask a colleague Mr. Dugindos to also address that but number one it was addressed very swiftly. The Swiss authorities maybe did not have many choices and it was very specific and probably a long lasting issue that was lingering and had been lingering for a long time. So I certainly would not draw the conclusion that the merger between UBS and Credit Suisse to be decided is an indication of the financial crisis far from it. But we are learning. I think that we also learned the value of having rules and the ability we had to come out very quickly on the pecking order of creditors actually mattered a lot and I think that we can also take a bit of learning from that. When creditors, investors know exactly who is going to bear the brunt of outstanding liabilities and a situation of insolvency it just helps and we did that. I'm glad we did. Well just to add that on the question about the indicators that we consider that we look at well we have a range of indicators. For instance you know equity prices, bank bonds, the spreads, the evolution of deposits and we have not seen the kind of situations that happened in other jurisdictions. So we had let's say a sort of increase of tensions after the events in the US with Silicon Valley and with Credit Suisse. In other words the situation has been quite calm. So we are continuously looking at those indicators but clearly now the conclusion is that the European banking industry has been clearly performing the American one in terms of the tension included in this kind of indicators and the potential stress in financial markets. Thank you Vice President President and turning to our online participants now I would like to give the floor to Francesco Nilfole of Milano Finanza. Francesco please. Thank you, good afternoon. President Lagarde can you explain a little bit more how you reconcile your data dependency with the pledge? Excuse us, can you repeat because we missed a few questions? Can I explain what? Can you explain how you reconcile your data dependency with the pledge of doing more in the future? Can you explain a little bit contradictory like a forward guidance without a forward guidance? Maybe you can explain it a little bit more. Secondly on core inflation. No doubt it is important to monitor core inflation but the ECB's target as you have said just now is headline inflation at 2% in the medium term. How do you explain such a great emphasis on core inflation also given also considering that core inflation has not been a good leading indicator for headline inflation in the past. Thank you. Thank you very much. Data dependency is not forward guidance and I'll try to explain that for you for a second. I'm not giving you the forward guidance that come what may or subject to or until such time we will do this or that. That for me would be forward guidance and we had it in the past and it was very appropriate to have forward guidance as we were at the lower bound and that was a tool that was very useful. What I'm telling you now is given our baseline the findings that we have the data that we can analyse today our judgement in the room is that we are not pausing that applies to today and based on what we see we determine that we have more ground to cover. I'm not saying that in the abstract I'm saying that with reference to the baseline of March to what we are seeing in development and I'm here saying we believe that we have more ground to cover. It is not state dependent it is not time dependent it is a judgement that we make today. So I hope I've been clear to try to explain to you how we can actually say that very firmly without giving forward guidance and being data dependent. Comes the June meeting, comes the July meeting comes the September meeting and so on and so forth we will look at the data and we will use the three criteria of our reaction function for monetary policy purposes and we will make our decision on a meeting by meeting basis. So you've also asked me another question about core. We had long discussions about core and we actually had many more discussions on underlying inflation because core is interesting. Core is easy to communicate. You take headline, the whole basket of everything that's in the index you take out food, you take out anything having to do with energy and you have core. But we want to go a little bit deeper into the index and the evolution that we see and we have multiple measurements that you are familiar with the trim, the PCCI the PCCI excluding energy and so on and so forth. We look at all of those and we try to understand from the evolution that we see what is the likelihood of inflation evolution. So I'm not maybe addressing your core versus headline but simply I'm saying that headline is the objective that we have it's the target that we have that we've agreed in our strategy review it happens to be people see all prices increasing and we are working for the people of Europe. Core easy to communicate but maybe not as informative as we want it to be so that leads us to dissect in far more details inflation. Thank you. Thank you President Lagarde and the next question goes to Christian Sieden-Wiedel of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Christian please. Yes, thank you. I'm sure many people will be interested to know whether the worst of inflation is over for food. Do you have that impression? Thank you for that question because it is food prices that is hurting most particularly the most vulnerable people and we know that because in the basket of consumption the most vulnerable spend a lot more on food than those who are well off so we pay special attention of course to food and the increase in prices. We have seen it go down if you compare March and April numbers so it is going down but we have to be extremely attentive because there are multiple factors that apply to food prices that apply to processed food prices I think we have also flagged the fact that profit last year and particularly in 2022 have contributed to inflation. This year 23 what we have seen of 23 we see more wage increases contributing to inflation. We would hope that through a good social contract these drivers of inflation do not activate each other in what I have called in other places a tit for tat I want more wages I am not going to give up on profits and you are then at risk of something that is much more difficult and would lead us to have to take more active measures in monetary policy. I wish I could tell you of course it will continue to go down but I am observing that it has gone down there are other factors that will come into play clearly climate change that will have an impact probably on a sectoral basis probably in relation to certain food items what happens in Ukraine is also going to bring another uncertainty in the background of serial price in particular but commodity prices have gone down that is a fact hopefully it will channel to the ultimate consumer. Thank you Madame Lagarde and the next question goes to Andres Stumpf of Expansion. Andres please. Good afternoon Madame Lagarde Can the ECB continue hiking if the Fed stops is that a baseline scenario you are working on? And a second question do you have any estimates on how much tightening is the QT and the TLTRO maturity adding to the monetary policy stance? Can you perhaps phrase it in hiking or basis points of hikes? You know I've heard the fiscal dependency I've heard the finance dependency I had not heard the Fed dependency so the ECB is an independent central bank looks at what others do around the world from New Zealand which has been an interesting innovator in the field of monetary policy all the way to the Fed and others and it's obvious that the US economy in whichever way it evolves has spillover effect around the world given its size the depth of its financial markets but we have a target, we have a journey we know as of today that we have more ground to cover and whatever the decision of the Fed is in the next few weeks, months, we are going to be riveted to our objective and we'll of course take into account variables the currency for instance as an impact any spillovers will be taken into account but we are not Fed dependent in that respect as to the actual tightening impact that the APP runoff has I don't want to commit a number but it does not have a massive impact as far as to say but we can give you separately the exact amount that has been calculated but it's not material thank you and the next question goes to Anna Carismo of the Finnish television Yle hello and thank you for the opportunity and nice to see you again we met in Lapland so yeah you have repeated that the journey continues and you are not pausing there are many households in Finland, Lithuania, Spain that struggle with the much higher interest rates and have had to cut a lot of funding so how do you take them into account when hiking the interest rates and then a second one what should they prepare themselves for what can you say to them about the future when can we see the policy rates going down and maybe affecting also the 12 month Eurobore, thank you thank you so much and it's nice to see you again so of course we are aware of these households that have contracted loans with floating rates, variable rates whatever you call it and from Finland to Portugal from some of the Baltic countries to Spain it is the case that some families are hurting because the reimbursements that they have to honour have gone up as a result of the interest rate increases that we had to decide this is unfortunately not something that we can alleviate or attenuate because our task is price stability our task is to reduce inflation and the tools of choice that works in that respect is the interest rates and we have to use that interest rates some countries are taking particular steps and measures and financial institutions are also looking at offering moratorium or delay and I think that the best we can do is to really tame inflation in a timely manner meaning as fast as we can in order to then facilitate a return to different interest rates that would not be as high in the future and I'm not here making any commitment to cut at any point in time thank you very much thank you President Lagarde and the next question you will travel next week to Japan for G7 meeting what kind of topics do you want to bring at this upcoming meeting from European point of view thank you thank you for giving us that angle from the east I would hope that together with my European colleagues we can one learn from colleagues particularly Japan which is just now which is moving into a new direction with a new governor so anything that will be the Japanese monetary policy going forward and any understanding that we have of their strategy review which he has announced I will be of interest and I would be very happy to share with him the learnings from our strategy review which I had started when I took the job I would also hope that we can explain two colleagues from Canada, Japan and the United States that the Europeans together are going to continue to demonstrate resilience capacity to operate together and I would hope that in that respect something that we say in the statement here will resonate which is to agree on the fiscal governance in short order so that in addition to having a monetary policy that is common to 20 countries we also have a fiscal framework which gives governance to the 27 member states and that fiscal policies that are determined by member states are also focused on value for money for lack of a better word in other words putting in place the right reforms focusing the spending where it is going to increase the competitiveness and the efficiency of the economy which is something that is absolutely indispensable in order to have this social contract which is often associated with Europe thank you thank you Madame Lagarde and the next question goes to Isabella Bufakioff Isabella please good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity if I may go back to quantitative tightening just to understand whether there is more ground to cover on QT or whether with this end of investments on APP this is the end of QT there could be more to be done with PEP for example starting on pandemic or selling bonds to make it even quicker so this also helps to understand how important is QT as a restrictive tool monetary policy and my second question if I may is on Teltros because even if the European banking system is solid and resilient and the banking crisis from the US could be over we hope still Teltros are going to end in an odd moment and are you concerned are you confident the banks can give back 500 billion in June and get away with it 477 yeah thank you thank you very much on QT let me be very clear QT is the decision that we expect to implement as of the 1st of July concerns APP reinvestment only and nothing else we have forward guidance PEP reimbursement nothing until 24 and you will find I think in the annex to my statement reference to the PEP and to the principle of flexibility which we believe is an important key aspect of PEP going forward so those tools are intact we're not planning on not reinvesting anything that comes for redemption under the PEP agreement on the on Teltros there is no surprise about Teltros if anything we have managed to offer the possibility for banks to accelerate and anticipate the reimbursement which I think has avoided a cliff effect that we would have had in over a trillion dollars would have become outstanding in June thanks to the accelerated reimbursement we are now done to 477 I'm checking the numbers because I want to I want to be clear on that so it's not a surprise it's a come due date and reimbursements are due and I know that banks have prepared for it and that there is a lot of liquidity out there to continue to prepare having said that I wouldn't surprise me if some of the facilities that we have that are standing facilities liquidity windows that are available full allotment and rates that are well known to all would become they are usable but would be used again because that's perfectly normal job of a central bank to actually provide liquidity we have weekly, we have the LTR row three months of reimbursement on all those liquidity facilities and if anything was to happen we have demonstrated in the past that we can be inventive thank you thank you very much this concludes our press conference today so I wish you all the best we have the next press conference on 15th of June and until then all the best and a good afternoon thank you