 And in Berlin and in Berlin I now welcome the president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi. Good evening, Mr. Draghi Good evening Mr. Draghi today when you talk to the members of German Parliament, did you feel like a defendant at court? No, not really not at all. I was actually first of all I was thankful for this opportunity to exchange views with people who actually are in contact with the rest of the people and Also, I really enjoy the exchange Have you then the feeling now? Do you have the feeling that the members of parliament also were Accepting your course and thinking that's the right one Well, I had you know, of course, it's not up to me to say that I convinced them But my perception was that most of the questions were generally trying to Understand how our work and our policies work whether they are effective what consequence they have and the real criticisms were very very few it was quite a quite widespread Support rather for the policies we do where we undertake Mr. Draghi now, what do you tell the normal German savers who practically do not get an interest now anymore on their savings account And feel almost expropriated. What do you tell them? Well, let me first say that Both the my colleagues in the governing council and myself take these concerns very seriously We have They the there is only one Honest answer to give With several sort of nuances around it, but the honest answer is that we need to return To a strong growth more growth. We need to have more growth with more growth will have Lower unemployment all over the eurozone. Of course now I'm speaking for the whole of the eurozone not only for Germany where conditions are definitely better than in the rest of the eurozone and When this will happen will have also higher nominal wages and Ultimately a return of inflation towards our objective of being of being close, but below 2% And at that point in time interest rates will rise again and the return on savings will also go up now Of course one can also say that if we look at the households in their aggregate We see that the savings they had from less payments in other words those households to the households that have a mortgage Would pay less these savings for lower payments are bigger than the loss of interest on their savings accounts But we are talking about the aggregate and within this figure. We have savers that have nothing but a Deposit account or a checking account or savings account and in that case, of course the lower rates mean lower income Had ragi debunking Mr. Draghi the banks they have to pay negative interest if they deposit their money with you with the ECB and this Although many banks are already suffering anyway and Deutsche Bank accused you of even worsening the problems in Europe So are we heading for a new banking crisis? let me say that I won't comment on individual institutions and Also, let me say that bank business models should be able to withstand periods of low interest rates within the banks category we have banks that Are weaker and we are banks that are doing actually quite well the spark us and the Corporate banks have rates of returns that are well above the average both in Germany and the eurozone And let's never forget that the measures that we have taken of Lower interest rates are always measures that will produce and are producing The objective that we are pursuing namely higher growth and higher inflation So ultimately this will prove beneficial to the banks themselves Furthermore when we look at the banks over all the eurozone We see that their profits last year actually went up and this is the first year when interest rates have been negative and Even the return they had from the net interest income also increased which says basically that the category overall did well and Within the category of course we have weak banks and strong banks But having said that I think a negative interest rate is not something that can go on forever So I never said about interest rates and about negative interest rates That's a yes or no question, but it's the answer is the extent and for how long Mr. Draghi the Federal Minister of Finance Mr. Scheuble has called a low interest rate policy one of the reasons For the growing popularity of right-wing populists in Europe. Now if that is true, isn't that a very high price to be paid? Well, I I wouldn't want to judge Political statements a statement There are similar statements being made in the south of Europe where they say that austerity is actually the reason for the increase in the popularity of populist movements in Spain in Italy and elsewhere and I one cannot really judge the point is that we have different jobs the policy at the job of Central banks of is to do the right things to reach the objective The policy of politicians is rather to deal with perceptions and explain the action of central banks Thank you Mr. Draghi, thank you very much for this interview. Thank you