 Well, good morning, dear Peter, dear friends and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to welcome you all today to this colloquium in honor of Peter Pratt. It's also a pleasure to welcome back so many colleagues and friends who have come to celebrate Peter's contribution to public life. Your presence here is a testament to the high regard in which Peter is held and the respect that he has established over the course of his career as an academic, a banker, and a central banker. The subject that Peter has chosen for his colloquium, monetary policy in an incomplete monetary union, captures one of the defining themes for our monetary policy over the last decade. The institutional framework of monetary union has affected our policy in a number of ways. We've seen monetary transmission impaired by the fragmentation in the financial sector. National structural policies have led to persistent differences in the responsiveness of wages and prices to shocks. I should say the lack of national structural policies in many parts of the eurozone. And the euro areas fiscal framework has produced an unbalanced macroeconomic policy mix with fiscal policy at times being prosyclical. From a monetary policy perspective, we therefore have a strong interest in seeing EMU completed. A stronger institutional architecture would not only reduce the severity of the shocks that monetary policy has to counter, but also improve the effectiveness of our policy in reaction to them and avoid that monetary policy becomes overburdened. Significant progress has been made during the crisis. The decision to set up banking union in 2012 was a turning point. And the SSM has already reduced divergence across countries in bank capital levels and supervisory intrusiveness. The structural reforms undertaken during the crisis have made economic structures more aligned. But since a long time, we've reached an unpass on key issues, in particular completing banking union and deepening fiscal policy coordination. And this is being perpetuated by two alleged dichotomies. The first is the notion that to finish banking union, to complete banking union, the risk reduction has to precede risk sharing. The second is the idea that deepening risk sharing through the private sector should take precedence over increasing public risk sharing through fiscal policies. In both instances, correct sequencing is important. Yet the notion that we face inherent trade-offs is somewhat false. Properly designed, they should in fact be complements, not substitutes. Take backstops for the banking sector, for example. It's argued that in normal times, they may create moral hazard. And therefore, reducing risk is necessary. But in crisis situations, the logic reverses. Without any risk sharing, markets typically panic and began fire sales which propagate risk, as we've seen at abundance during the crisis. Appropriate backstops, on the other hand, help stabilize market expectations and reduce risk. The role of the FDIC in the United States during the crisis is a good example of this. And the point is so strong that in fact, it is the presence of a backstop that allowed a well-ordered risk reduction at times of crisis. During the crisis in the United States, around 500 banks were resolved in US without triggering financial instability. In contrast, one estimate puts the total number of banks resolved in the euro area in that period at around 50. The same applies to private and public risk sharing. It's certainly better in principle for private markets to take up the bulk of absorbing shocks, as we see in the United States. But for the private sector to play this role, there needs to be deep cross-border financial integration. And for that to arise in the first place, institutions for public risk sharing have to be in place. Otherwise, national authorities will have the incentives to ring fans as they have done and continue doing. Completing banking union and strengthening fiscal union is not about creating a transfer union. It's about creating a euro area where there is less need for public risk sharing in the future, because financial crisis can be stabilized more quickly, and because we have the right framework for private sector risk sharing to develop more sustainably. If we are to take the debate on MU forward, we need to think more in terms of these interactions between policies. And this is, in fact, the type of thinking that has always characterized Peter. There are some who claim to be committed to the European project, but they do so either in a sort of naive way by espousing noble but unattainable ideals, or in a what I would call cynical way, by backing further integration only on the condition that unsurmountable hurdles are first overcome. But there are others who look honestly at the challenges that Europe faces, who strive to understand where possible solutions might lie, and who work to do something about them. These are the people that I consider are truly committed to Europe, and Peter is one of them. For the last eight years, almost eight years, Peter has been tireless in his commitment to working for Europe by fulfilling the ECB's mandate. During his term as chief economist, he's helped steer our monetary policy through two of the most important episodes in the ECB's history, the response to the Euro area sovereign debt crisis, and the response to the deflationary threats that began in 2014. Thanks to his contributions today, he leaves an ECB that has evolved considerably from the one he found that has demonstrated the irreversibility of the Euro, and that has shown its willingness and its ability to use all the tools in its toolkit to secure price stability. If throughout this period, the ECB has grown into a more modern central bank, Peter has been at the heart of that change. I've used the words honesty and true in what I just said about Peter, and not by chance. The chief economist has the important function now, in what I'm going to say, I'll kind of back what Stan said last night at dinner, though from a different angle, as you'll see. So the chief economist has the important function of preparing the governing council discussion that leads to the decision of monetary policy. The governing council members have a knowledge which unavoidably tends to be influenced by the information set they have, and that is by design associated with developments in their own constituencies. The role of the chief economist is to put all the information about the Eurozone together. And he has the task of aggregating this information into one set which describes the state of the Eurozone economy at that time. You understand that this is not a small achievement, also considering the heterogeneity of our 90 members. This presentation is the basis upon which the monetary policy decision is made by the governing council following the proposal of the chief economist. This presentation, as complex as it is, especially at times of incoming crisis, can be made in several ways. One, for example, is to read reality through a preset view of the world with the fair intent of giving the governing council a clear reference set for deliberating and then present the governing council not with one clear proposal, but with an array of proposals or with different scenarios. Another way is to give an exhaustive, often an excruciatingly exhaustive and transparent presentation of the state of the Eurozone economy with all the uncertainties inherent in its complexities, leaving the members of the governing council free to decide what is more important, but presenting them with one clear monetary policy proposal. This was Peter's way. In this sense, I spoke of honesty and truth. He's never been outvoted in eight years. This, of course, demands a lot of work. Anyone who's worked closely with Peter can attest to his, say, curiosity, intellectual curiosity, maybe overall curiosity. He reads voluminously, arriving at 6 AM every morning to sift through piles of notes and briefings, keeps abreast of new research, and always relishes new insights and information. But it is more than curiosity, hard work, and pragmatism in his presentation. As I said, the other task that he had was to make the monetary policy proposal, where he spoke clearly his mind, shying away from the one hand and the other hand style. And this was certainly not easy in the conditions we faced for most of the crisis. For much of that period, policymaking was ahead of certain academia. Policymakers could not defend their decisions by appealing to the present views prevailing, at least in this part of the world. They had to be confident in their economics, trust their judgment, and take responsibility for their choices. And Peter always reminded us that this takes also a lot of courage. Trust is most important in collegial decision making bodies like the ECB. Certainly, sound economics, rich and varied professional experience, knowledge of facts, and an open mind to capture their changes, the changes in facts, integrity in their assessment, in the assessment of facts, and courage in decision making are a sound basis for trust and would be enough to make any institution proud. But at ECB, we had a further privilege. All this came to us from a sunny personality, as we've all seen last night at dinner, without a sense of self-importance, always accompanied by patience and warmth in asking others for their views. It was this combination of talents, integrity, and humanity that explains the trust that your executive board and governing council colleagues always had in you, Peter. Dear Peter, on behalf of the colleagues of the governing council and on behalf of whoever has at her or his heart the cause of Europe, let me thank you for all you've done and wish that Europe may continue to benefit from your work. Thank you.