Mario Draghi wrapped up his final monetary policy meeting at the European Central Bank by leaving interest rates unchanged and sticking to the existing package of loosening measures he announced last month.
The outgoing ECB president said he was proud of pursuing the central bank’s mandate during his term in office, adding: “That is part of our legacy: Never give up.”
The ECB had been widely expected to leave policy unchanged after it triggered a fierce debate last month by cutting interest rates to minus 0.5 per cent and restarting its quantitative easing programme to purchase bonds following a 10-month hiatus.
The central bank’s governing council repeated its guidance that interest rates would not rise “until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2 per cent within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics”.
In a press conference after the announcement, Mr Draghi called on eurozone governments to enact reforms to improve productivity and labour markets, and to use fiscal policy to further stimulate the bloc’s economy.
“All countries should intensify their efforts to achieve a more growth-friendly composition of public finances,” he said.
Mr Draghi added that the global economic paradigm had recently changed and policymakers at the IMF and elsewhere now accepted that interest rates would remain low for a long time to come.
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