Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

Certainly. I said this in my opening statement but it is worth repeating. The ECB's target is that we achieve 2% inflation over the medium term. Intuitively, people ask why not less than that. A rate of 2% reflects an assessment, based partly on historical evidence, that it is the right rate to encourage investment which promotes growth in a stable and sustainable way. If inflation were zero or even negative, people's incentives to spend would be distorted. They would tend not to spend, meaning that businesses would tend not to invest. That would then result in a deflationary spiral, which, ultimately, would result in lower growth and job losses in the economy. A rate of 2% is therefore the judgment we at the ECB have come to but it is also the level that other central banks around the world have come to as being the right amount of inflation to encourage economic growth in a stable way.